FAIR USE means that for educational purposes (i.e. schoolwork) you can use quotes, clips, images and other media . . . just make sure you provide a citation!  Learn how to responsibly flex your fair use muscle!

Here's a great Copyright FAQ from Ancilla College.

The videos below are an easy way to understand fair use . . .

Even when Fair Use principles say you can use parts of someone else's copyrighted work (their words, images, etc.) in yours, you still need to acknowledge that source by citing it -- in other words indicate who said or made it, and where you got it from.

Plagiarism is a different but related concept. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work (their words, images, etc.) as if you were the author. So when you write a paper and present ideas from articles or books you have read, you must indicate where you found that information. Learn more on our Cite Your Sources page, or talk to a librarian anytime!

• Mashups, Sampling and Remixing
  • Mashups and Sampling: What’s Fair Use? from RocketLawyer
  • Mashup: A Fair Use Defense from Yale U.
  • Mashups - A Protected Form of Appropriation Art or a Blatant Copyright Infringement? scholarly article by a law prof.
• YouTube
  • What is Fair Use? from YouTube
  • What's Legal on YouTube from Videomaker.com
• Filesharing and Piracy
  • CUNY's official position on File Sharing (pdf)
  • Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing and Copyright Infringement: Are You Vulnerable? from the U. of Washington
  • College Textbook Piracy article from TechDirt
• Best Practices
  • Finding images and movie/audio clips that don't have copyright restrictions.
    • Public domain and creative commons licensing video from Creative Commons
    • Creative Commons at Flikr
    • Wikimedia Commons "is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips)."
    • Digital Collections such as those at the New York Public Library and GettyImages
  • Link instead of copying! and don't link to an illegal thing legitimate links instead of
  • Low and no cost textbook materials OER etc.

"A baby bobs up and down in a kitchen, as a Prince song plays in the background. His mother laughs in the background and his older sister zooms in and out of the frame. This innocuous 29-second home video clip was posted to YouTube in 2007 and sparked a long legal proceeding on copyright and fair use law." Read more from NPR.