Ever wonder if you can copy a bit of text and comment on it? Probably not. This is such a common thing that just about everyone knows that it's perfectly OK to do so long as you're actually commenting on it, talking about it with respect to news, or criticizing it (such as a review, or whatever).

But what if you want to use an image from another site attached to an article you're commenting on? Or what about a picture of a car you want to talk about? What if that car isn't yours? What if you want to talk about a company and use their logo so everyone knows that you're talking about the real one and not some company with a similar name?

Nolo is often a great resource for legal issues. It, however, did not mention anything about images. In fact, part of what it talked about is something is more likely to be fair use if you're not using anywhere near all of it. However, when using an image, you're usually using all of it. So, what then?

Well, Laurie found a great Wikipedia entry that talks about this for their own use. Since they have so many people posting a variety of things on the site and they certainly want images, this becomes a huge issue for them. They have a great 10 part questionnaire that gives an idea if a use is fair or not for an image.

In general, things like screen shots, corporate logos, book covers, album covers, historical pictures, and other such things may be fair use. However, the thing to bring back from all of this is that it's all on a case by case basis.

Another way to tell is if you're using an image or text to further your own works to compete with the source you copied from. If, on the other hand, you're using it to review or promote the source you're copying from, that may more likely be fair use. Why? Either could cause damage, especially if the review was very negative. However, that does a public service, which may be OK for fair use (see the Nolo page for an example of this).

I believe I would be completely OK in using both the Wikipedia logo and the Nolo log on this posting because I'm talking about them and their resources and recommending people go look at their writings. I could also quote various parts of their text to comment on. I've done neither. Why? In this case, I'm too lazy to go do that. And that's a fair reason to not use fair stuff. Har. :p

Wikipedia:Fair use - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When Copying Is Okay: The "Fair Use" Rule

Posted by Shane on May 14, 2005 12:39 PM | Permalink