Fair Use and Copyright Act of 1976

While policymakers pay much attention to copyrights, exceptions to copyright protection also promote innovation and are a major catalyst of U.S. economic growth. Specific exceptions to copyright protection under U.S. and international law, generally classified under the broad heading of Fair Use, are vital to any industries and stimulate growth across the economy. Companies benefiting from fair use generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006,represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP.

Three recent appellate decisions concerning fair use should give educators and librarians greater confidence and guidance for asserting this important privilege. In all three decisions, the courts permitted extensive copying and display in the commercial context because the uses involved repurposing and recontextualization. The reasoning of these opinions could have far-reaching implications in the educational environment.

The fundamental goals of media literacy education -- to cultivate critical thinking about media and its role in culture and society and to strengthen creative communication skills -- are compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions and lack of understanding about copyright law, as interviews with dozens of teachers and makers of media literacy curriculum materials showed.
In K-12, higher education, and after-school programs and workshops, teachers face conflicting information about their rights, and their students' rights, to quote copyrighted material. They also confront complex, restrictive copyright policies in their own institutions. As a result, teachers use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms.