Copyright and Fair Use

All materials on this site that have been created by the DEEDS Project are © 2006 by the DEEDS Project, all rights reserved. A good faith effort has been made to comply with US and Canadian copyright law.

Material on this site has been (a) created by the site author and/or the DEEDS Project team; (b) assembled from a variety of printed and manuscript sources and has been placed here for ease and rapidity of local access; or (c) for small amounts of text, derived from printed material. Any copyright material used from this site must not be used for personal commercial gain; used exclusively for educational purposes; and used in limited amounts in comparison to the published source. If there are any objections that material placed here does not conform to the fair use provisions outlined, viewers are requested to contact the DEEDS Project.

Limitations of Exclusive Rights: Fair Use

The fair use doctrine allows limited reproduction of copyrighted works for educational and research purposes. The relevant portion of the copyright statute provides that the fair use of a copyrighted work, including reproduction for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright. 

The law lists the following factors as the ones to be evaluated in determining whether a particular use of a copyrighted work is a permitted fair use, rather than an infringement of the copyright:

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit education purposes.
• The nature of the copyrighted work.
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

As for original material prepared by the DEEDS Project, permission is given to use it freely in electronic form and in print commercial, educational and research purposes only as long as the source and date of last modification, the name of the site author and his affiliations, as well as this notice, are explicitly reproduced.