FAIR USE
DEFINITION
Fair use is a US legal doctrine that permits limited unlicensed use of copyrighted material, evaluated through a flexible four-factor test covering purpose, nature of the work, amount used, and market effect. It is a case-by-case defence decided by courts, not a fixed list of permitted uses.
WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE
The four factors are the purpose and character of the use, including whether it is transformative or commercial; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used; and the effect on the market for the original. No single factor is automatically decisive, and courts weigh them together.
Fair use is famously unpredictable, because it is applied after the fact by a court rather than checked against a pre-approved list of allowed uses. Parody, commentary, criticism, and news reporting are the classic contexts where courts have found fair use, but even those are decided individually rather than treated as blanket exemptions.
The EU has no directly equivalent open-ended doctrine. It uses fair dealing style exceptions instead, which are closed categories defined by statute, generally narrower and more predictable but far less flexible than the American approach.
Fair use is a defence you raise if sued, not a permission you obtain in advance, which is why relying on it for a commercial project carries real legal risk even when a use feels obviously reasonable.
AN EXAMPLE
A film critic in the US uses a 15-second clip from a blockbuster movie in a video essay analysing its editing technique. Because the use is transformative commentary, uses only a small portion, and does not substitute for watching the film, a court would likely find it fair use, though the critic has no guarantee of that outcome until a court actually says so.
WATCH OUT
People treat 'it's for education' or 'I gave credit' as a fair use guarantee, but neither factor alone determines the outcome, and credit is not one of the four factors at all.
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