Copyright & Fair Use

The Stanford University library system has teamed up with the Council on Library Resources to compile an on-line archive of information on copyright law. Their goal is to keep people abreast of the continuing debate over what constitutes "fair use" -- a legal provision that allows people to reproduce limited quantities of copyrighted material for the purposes of criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, or research.

Electronic publishing has complicated the "fair use" debate, because the Internet makes it easy to reproduce and distribute text and images. Professors have fought for the right to include copyrighted pictures and writings on World-Wide Web pages they have created for their classes or for scholarly projects on line. Meanwhile, publishers and other copyright holders have worked to protect their intellectual property in cyberspace.

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