Fair use

From Krass

The fair use doctrine refers to an aspect of U.S. copyright law that provides for the licit, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under certain, specifiable conditions. The term "fair use" is unique to the United States; a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions.

Fair use makes copyrighted work available to the public as raw material without the need for permission or clearance, so long as such free usage serves the purpose of copyright law, which the U.S. Constitution defines as the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (I.1.8), better than the legal enforcement of claims of infringement. The doctrine hereby attempts to balance the interests of individual copyright holders with the social or cultural benefits that follow from the creation and distribution of derivative works. Insofar as this doctrine protects forms of expression that might otherwise be injuncted as copyright infringing, it has been related to First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution