Before you throw up your hands and say, "What's the use," consider your own liability for copyright infringement. Individuals are liable for their own actions. Copyright owners have sued and probably will continue to sue individuals. They will probably sue the University too, but that may not insulate the individual who took the allegedly infringing action from the full force of a lawsuit.
The penalties for infringement are very harsh: the court can award up to $150,000 for each separate act of willful infringement. Willful infringement means that you knew you were infringing and you did it anyway. Ignorance of the law, though, is no excuse. If you don't know that you are infringing, you still will be liable for damages - only the amount of the award will be affected. Then there are attorneys' fees...
if you disregard sound advice about fair use, a court would be free to award the highest level of damages available. This makes someone who ignores policies a handsome target for a lawsuit.
Freeware (not shareware, but really, expressly, available free of restrictions-ware -- this may be protected by law, but the author has chosen to make it available without any restrictions)
Use a work as the basis for a new work (create a derivative work)
Electronically distribute or publish copies (distribute a work)
Publicly perform music, prose, poetry, a drama, or play a video or audio tape or a CD-ROM, etc. (publicly perform a work)
Publicly display an image on a computer screen or otherwise (publicly display a work)
3. Is your use exempt or excused from liability for infringement?
If an exemption does not excuse infringement and eliminate the need to ask permission or pay fees to exercise the owner's rights, you need permission.
Here's how it works:
With a particular use in mind,
Read each question and the comments about it
Answer each question about your use
See how the balance tips with each answer
Make a judgment about the final balance: overall does the balance tip in favor of fair use or in favor of getting permission?
Commercial
Criticism
Commentary
Newsreporting
Parody
Otherwise "transformative" use
Nonprofit
Educational
Personal
FACTOR 2: What is the nature of the work to be used?
What kind of work is it?
Imaginative
Unpublished
A mixture of fact and imaginative
Fact
Published
Probably okay use.
FACTOR 3: How much of the work will you use?
Small amount
More than a small amount
a nonprofit educational institution may copy an entire article from a journal for students in a class as a fair use; but a commercial copyshop would need permission for the same copying.
Similarly, commercial publishers have stringent limitations on the length of quotations, while a student writing a paper for a class assignment could reasonably expect to include lengthier quotes.
FACTOR 4: If this kind of use were widespread, what effect would it have on the market for the original or for permissions?
Competes with (takes away sales from) the original
Avoids payment for permission (royalties) in an established permissions market
Not Fair Use. Permission is required.
This factor asks, "If the use were widespread, would the copyright owner be losing money?" Well, actually, it asks, "If the use were widespread, and the use were not fair, would the copyright owner be losing money?" After all, if the use were fair, the copyright owner would not be entitled to any money at all, so he couldn't "lose" what he never would have had to begin with.
