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Fair Use: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
{{historical|This page is a discussion of the concepts of "Fair Use" and "Fair Dealing". For a discussion of how Fair Dealing applies to All The Tropes, see [[All The Tropes:Copyrights]].}}
{{cleanup|This page discusses only the laws of Canada and the United States of America, and only has examples from the USA.}}
''There are occasions when parts of a work still under [[Copyright]] [and [[Disney Owns This Trope|trademark]]] may be legally used or copied even without the copyright holder's permission.''
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The principle is called "[[Fair Dealing]]" in [[Canada]], and is slightly different from its counterpart south of the border. Research, private study, education, parody and satire are completely protected. Criticism, review, and news reporting are protected only if the source is identified and (if they're identified in the source) the author, performer, maker (of a sound recording), or broadcaster is identified. Anything else - including the generic "Comment" mentioned for The United States above - is ''not'' considered to be Fair Dealing in Canada.
In trademark, fair use allows trademarked names and logos to be used to identify their corporate owners – a seemingly-obvious concept which arises sometimes with respect to consumer complaint and criticism sites. XYZ Company has no right to stop "xyzsucks.com" from posting consumer complaints about XYZ's products, although a few [[Amoral Attorney|shysters]] have tried – usually in the hopes of silencing an outspoken critic by [[Frivolous Lawsuit|bankrupting them with legal fees]]. Other uses (such as XYZ's direct competitor creating an "XYZsucks" site solely to tout their rival product, or cybersquatters registering "xyzsucks" domains just to sell them back to XYZ Inc. at extortionate prices) are not necessarily protected by fair use. One notable example is United Airlines censoring consumer-complaint site "untied.com". [[Your Mileage May Vary]].
There are cautions, which is why lawyers live in luxury. A use in one context might be considered fair in one court and not fair in another. Some uses are always considered fair, but others are borderline cases where sometimes it was called fair and sometimes it wasn't. And Big Media is working to ''kill'' fair use in order to maximize profits.
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=== Literature ===
* While J.K. Rowling was able to stop a man who was developing
* ''The Nation'' magazine used 300 words from President Ford's 30,000-word memoir (the ones about pardoning Nixon...
=== Music ===
* 2 Live Crew recorded a parody of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" and released it on their album ''Clean As They Wanna Be'' despite being refused permission by the copyright owners Acuff-Rose Music to actually do so. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court found that parodying copyrighted work, even if the parody is of a commercial nature, is a sufficient defence for fair use. This is why [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] can release so many parodies (but gets permission to stay friendly with artists). It's also the go-to citation for anyone who receives DMCA threats. ''Campbell'' v. ''Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.'', 510 U.S. 569 (1994)
* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] attempted to obtain permission to parody "You're Beautiful" by [[One-Hit Wonder|one-hit wonder]] James Blunt as "You're Pitiful"; Blunt's record company bluntly refused. The track was released on Weird Al's website under fair use, but was never pressed as a physical record.
* Other parodies like "Bomb Iran" (recorded by various
* Fair use provided no protection against Australian right-wing politico Pauline Hanson's efforts to censor a parody song by drag queen "Pauline Pantsdown"; she obtained a court order (injunction) preventing the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from broadcasting the novelty tune using defamation laws. The song pasted various snippets of her own voice to create the edited message "I'm a backdoor man / I'm homosexual / I'm a backdoor man / Yes I am." Her bizarre argument convinced a judge that the song would lead the public to believe that she is [[Everyone Is Gay|a gay male]].
* West Coast disc jockey Rick Dees asked permission to use part of the song "When Sunny Gets Blue" to lampoon the performance of Johnny Mathis in a parody called "When Sonny Sniffs Glue". The copyright owner, songwriter Marvin Fisher, refused to grant permission, but Dees decided to use about 29 seconds of the song anyway. Fisher sued, arguing that the use was not fair and that the request for permission was evidence that Dees was aware his use was not fair. The court decided that the amount of use was reasonable for parodying Mathis' style, it had no effect on the market value of the underlying song, and asking for permission does not affect the determination as to whether a use is or isn't fair. The decision finding the use to be fair was upheld on appeal. ''Fisher'' v. ''Dees'', 794 F.2d 432 (9th Cir. 1986)
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