Copyright and Duplication Information

A poster version is also available. For copyright status of The Hub see About.Copyright.

It is established law that in some cases reproduction of copyrighted materials can take place under the doctrine of fair use without permission of the holder. Courts use the following rules to determine fair use applicability.

1. The purpose and nature of use of the copy.
   1. Generally, use must be noncommercial or educational.
2. The nature of the copyrighted matter.
   1. It is more difficult to apply the fair use doctrine to creative, than factual works.
3. The amount of the copyrighted matter used.
   1. There are no set amounts that define fair use, courts use common-sense judgment in this matter. Further, the copyrighted matter must not be so central to the overall work or it may fall beyond the scope of fair use.
4. The effect on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted matter.
   1. Does the use compete with or diminishe the potential market for the form of use that the copyright holder is already employing? or can it be reasonably expected to employ soon? or its ability to make profit from licensing? If so, it is not fair use.

Ideas and facts are in the public domain and certain works are not copyrightable, such as...

• Words, names, slogans, or other short phrases.
• Blank forms.
• Judicial opinions, laws and ordinances and administrative rulings.
• Works created by federal government employees as part of their official responsibility.
  • This includes money, HOWEVER reproducing money is fraught with separate legal difficulties. The reproduction must be of a substantially different size, or otherwise altered. Counterfeiting is of course, illegal.
• Works for which copyright wasn't obtained or copyright has expired¹
• Individual recipes, addresses, individual phone book listings, individual dictionary definitions, fonts per-se², colors or other 'pure facts' such as tables of measurements etc.

¹ These are few and far between indeed, very few works have passed into the public domain this way because copyright terms are now very long indeed. While The Constitution prohibits perpetual copyright, Congress, at the behest of large movie studios; holding companies and record labels, has improperly circumvented this proviso by means of repeated copyright extension acts.

A lack of copyright statement no longer means the work is in the public domain, modern U.S. copyrights are pretty much automatic. This is one of the most persistant copyright law myths.

² A digital file containing the font is copyrightable.

This document is dedicated to the public domain

Categories: Scanner, Legal