From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

Faculty and content creators often have questions about using copyrighted text in their work. The use of visual images in teaching or writing about art raises a particular set of fair use and copyright issues that need to be considered. The College Art Association recently addressed these issues with the February 2015 release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts. The code includes questions and guidelines about invoking fair use in analytic writing, teaching about art, making art and providing access to archival collections. This up-to-date code, authored by lead investigators Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide, professors of Law and Communication Studies respectively at American University, in consultation with practitioners in the field, joins a growing list of best practices in various fields including documentary film, poetry, dance, online video, journalism and academic and research libraries. The codes help guide users of copyrighted material to make their own well-informed decisions about how and what they can use based on the Fair Use section of U.S. copyright law. They also help inform judges – in the case of a legal action – about common practice within a given discipline. The visual arts code as well many others can be found online at the Center for Media and Social Impact (cmsimpact.org).

Kathleen Collins

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