Section 8 · Sourcing & Image Ethics

Fair Use

Definition

A US legal doctrine permitting limited unlicensed use of protected work, evaluated against four factors: the purpose and character of the use (including whether it transforms the original), the nature of the original work, the amount used relative to the whole, and the effect on the original’s market.

Why it matters

Fair use is a defense assessed case by case, not a category work can be placed into beforehand. Educational context helps but does not settle it, and “I changed it a bit” is not transformation.

Example

A collage recontextualizing a fragment of a widely circulated news image to comment on it argues more strongly for fair use than one reproducing a photograph largely intact for its aesthetic appeal.

Teaching note

Requiring the reasoning — which factors support the use — rather than the label alone is what turns this from a loophole students invoke into an analysis they perform.