If you are going to create remixes for our site, there are a few things you should know about copyright law and "Fair Use."
Many artists and creators are encouraged to create new works because they know that copyright law protects those works. Copyright law gives creators the exclusive right to:
- Make copies of their work.
- Make adaptations and translations, or what is known as "derivative works," from their work.
- Publicly distribute and perform their work.
But the law also understands that creative work often builds on the work of others. As Judge Alex Kozinski (of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) wrote:
- "Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before."
No one understands "building on the works of those who came before" more than remixers and mash-up artists. We take elements from our culture and use them to create new expressions and new ideas. We’re able to do that because there is an area of copyright law where the exclusive rights granted to creators are limited in order to accommodate free speech – that’s Fair Use.
Fair Use lets you use copyrighted material in order to:
- Make a social or political critique or satire.
- Create a parody.
- Make an argument.
- Report on the news.
- Educate the public on an important issue.
We link to the full text of the Fair Use statute, and to some other helpful websites, below. Because there are no bright lines concerning Fair Use, we suggest that you consult these sites to learn more about it. You don’t infringe copyright when you use copyrighted material that you find on the web as long as it is a "Fair Use" of the material. Whether you use our editor or upload a remix that you’ve made on your own computer, we’ll ask you [are we actually going to ask?] if the material you’ve uploaded contains copyrighted material that is "Fairly" Used. [Whether you use our editor or upload a remix that you’ve made on your own computer, you can use copyrighted materials only to the extent permitted by Fair Use.
Perhaps the most important factor to consider when judging whether the material you’ve used would be covered under Fair Use is:
"Did you use only as much material as you needed to:
- Get your point across.
- Report the news.
- Create a true parody or satire."
RemixAmerica.com is a non-partisan, educational website. We are here to promote a new kind of political discourse, from many points of view. We encourage our users to use historical documents that can educate our audience. We encourage you to create remixes that will be part of our mission.
Links:
- U.S. Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
- Indiana University: http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/fairuse.htm
- Stanford University Fair Use Project: http://fairuse.stanford.edu
- New York University: http://fairusenetwork.org
- University of Texas: http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/copypol2.htm
- American University Center for Social Media: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use/
