Ethical Use of Information

Copyright

Fair Use

Plagiarism

Citing Sources

Fair Use

The doctrine of fair use is described by section 107 of the copyright law. Fair use allows copyrighted material to be used for purposes such as reviews, research and teaching IF such use does not affect the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

An example: you use spreadsheet software for your accounting class. The software is loaded on workstations in a campus lab, but you do not have a copy at home. You make a copy of the spreadsheet software from the computer lab workstation and load it onto your home workstation, rationalizing that the copy falls within fair use because you attend a non-profit educational institution, and it is used in your class.

This is a copyright violation. By making a copy for use at home, you have "affected" the potential market value of the software by copying it rather than buying it. The copy you made and loaded onto your computer has denied the creator of the software its value (money in this case).