Fair Use

According to copyright.gov, the “fair use” doctrine promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses – such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research – as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use. As vivianleeposts.com is a non-commercial site hosting academic research that features criticism, comment, news reporting, and scholarship, it utilizes the fair use doctrine in its inclusion of photographs, video clips, and brief excerpts from interviews or publications by others, with the sources cited when known. The articles at vivianleeposts.com can be considered “transformative,” in that they aim to add something new, with a further purpose or different character from the works cited, and they do not substitute for the original use of the work.