Fair Use Guide

What is "Fair Use"?

• Detailed guidelines regarding Fair Use and educational multimedia can be found at this link.
• Fair use is a legal principle that provides certain limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright holders.
• Educators, scholars and students are generally favored in Fair Use determinations but Fair Use guidelines are deliberately flexible so caution is advised when sharing copyrighted multimedia even for educational purposes.
• Best practices for sharing multimedia for class include:
  • Limit access only to students in class.
  • Remove access to content after use.
  • When applicable, only provide access to the amount of content you need (i.e., one scene of a film).

"Fair Use", The LLC and a Department's Role in Determining Justification

While the UW and most educational institutions do not have strict guidelines (because legally, fair use laws could be considered out paced by technology and pedagogical practice), there are many resources that provide ‘rules of thumb’ to help instructors make a determination.

The LLC is unable to determine fair use based on these general rules, as we don’t have the capacity to do so, but also because we don’t have the understanding of the instructional and media origin context that the departments and instructors have. As the LLC isn’t the one ‘using’ the resources, it’s not for us to determine ‘fair use’. The LLC only provides the technical service to departments and instructors with key provisions in place to uphold fair-use and copyright respect on the technical ends (e.g., limited access to the media time-wise and population-wise). We adhere as close as possible to the policies and recommendations provided by other similar efforts on this campus and others.

Because of the above, instructors and their departments must make a reasonable fair use determination before initiating a streaming media request with the LLC. If you submit physical media (with the required request form found here: link to request form), the LLC must assume that you have made this determination.

LLC Streaming Multimedia Guidelines

For Fair Use purposes, the LLC is unable to provide access to multimedia files such as movies, TV shows, or music indefinitely unless the faculty member or department is the rights holder.

The LLC will try to keep streaming multimedia links consistent for classes that repeat yearly or quarterly. However, the streaming media will not remain active for prolonged periods of time and links should not be shared outside of the range of a specific class or with other faculty members. Each quarter, the instructor/department must send a formal request for those links to be made active for that quarter (using the request form found here: link to request form).

In most cases (especially when media is frequently used), instructors will not need to provide a hard copy each time. We will archive the media on a secure storage space (with no external access - again, for fair use), until the media is requested formally, fair-use has been determined (and we have the key data points used to make that determination, such as the time-frame, intent and population details of the people accessing the materials). While it may seem that there is a predictable overlap for some courses and that this is unnecessary bureaucratic procedure - copyright law, as vague as some aspects of it are, still requires that we do all that we can, within reason, for each distinct ‘use’ of the media.

LLC Procedure for New Streaming Multimedia Requests

• Instructors who need access to multimedia should first work with their department coordinator to determine that their request falls within the guidelines of fair use.
• Once fair use has been determined, the instructor should fill out the request form found here: link to request form.
• The physical media and accompanying form should be delivered to the LLC.
• This can be done in person or via campus mail:

Denny Hall
Room 162 Box 353140

• The LLC cannot request and pickup resources from the library on the behalf of an instructor, but once the conversion process is complete, the LLC can:
  • Return resources to the library.
  • Return resources to the campus mailbox for the instructor/department.
  • Hold the resources for the instructor to pick up in person.