The Dangers of Fair Use Copyright Policy

How often do you feel safe about your work? Do you feel that your work is protected enough by copyright laws?

If you do there is a bad news for you. There is a flaw in the existing copyright law, a flaw known as Fair Use Policy.

What is Fair Use Policy?

The fair use policy is an exemption to the existing copyright law, the one which all bloggers and websites use in order to ward off copiers from your precious creation. Wikipedia on Fair Use states that

'Fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders'. 

The fair use policy grants right to use a small snippet of copyrighted material without actually getting permission from the original owner. Though it was created to provide a preview of a person's copyrighted work which actually is not free to use, there is an inherent weakness or a flaw in the policy itself.

Difference between Fair Use and Creative Commons

This is much different that a creative commons concept. In a creative commons concept, the web owner allows the use of content with some limitations (Here you license your work with a creative commons). The first image of this article is a part of creative commons, which allows me to modify and use it for personal purposes. This however is not the case with fair use. A Fair use is an exception allowed for using/ reproducing a copyrighted material.

What is the problem with Fair Use?

Do you know the problem in the policy? It is just a single word in the Wikipedia's version.  The word is "Limited Use"

What is limited use? For a 400 word article, limited use may include hosting a copy containing words ranging from a meager 20 word preview or a 399 word preview "I left out a word you know. I did not use your complete article you know”. For a 20 minute video, the preview might range from a harmless 1 minute trailer or a 19 minute 59 seconds video, thereby leaving out the thank you note at the end of the video.

Since the implementation and the interpretation of fair use reside only with judges and the legal eagles, you never know if your work has been copied "Fairly" or "Unfairly" (Yes I'm using sarcastic quotes). In short, though it is named as fair use, it actually is a loophole in the system itself thereby enabling a cyber thief to blatantly copy your work without offering an apology.

How does Fair Use affect you?

When your content is available on another website for perusal, you lose valuable readers, your page start coming below the alleged website and hence your website drops in SERPs.

Related Reading,

• A really nice article on Fair use can be found at center for social media impact in their article about how journalists think about fair use
• You can also found a FAQ on Fair use at US copyright Webpage

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