Fair Use and Music

Guidelines

These guidelines are based upon the 1998 Conference on Fair Use (CONFU) report to congress and have their roots in the original Kastenmeier Guidelines from 1976. The AD Hoc committee that composed those guidelines clearly indicated that the guidelines were meant to be a minimum that constituted educational fair use. The guidelines have not been passed into law and represent the suggested conditions under which educators can use copyright protected materials without getting consent of the author or creator of the work. They are presented here to assist you in making decisions about whether or not your intended use of certain materials is fair or what is an infringement. Remember these are guidelines and not hard and fast rules. Use them to guide you in your selection of educational materials.


The following uses are permissible:

  1. Emergency copying to replace purchased copies which are not available for an imminent performance, provided that purchased replacement copies shall be substituted in due course.

  2. For academic purposes other than performance, single or multiple copies of excerpts of works may be made, provided that the excerpts do not comprise a part of the whole which would constitute a performable unit such as a section, movement or aria, but in no case more than 10 percent of the whole work. The number of copies shall not exceed one copy per pupil.

  3. Printed copies that have been purchased may be edited or simplified provided that the fundamental character of the work is not distorted or the lyrics, if any altered or lyrics added if none exist.

  4. A single copy of a sound recording (such as a tape, disc, or cassette) of performances by students may be made for evaluation or rehearsal purposes and may be retained by the educational institution or individual teacher.

  5. A single copy of a sound recording (such as a tape, disc or cassette) of copyrighted music may be made from sound recordings owned by an educational institution or an individual teacher for the purpose of constructing aural exercises or examinations and may be retained by the educational institution or individual teacher.

Note: Including a sound file on a Web page violates the single copy rule for sound recording. Each time a WWW page is viewed and sounds included in it are played, it is considered a copy of the sound recording.

The following uses are prohibited:

  1. Copying to create a substitute or replacement for anthologies, compilations or collective works.

  2. Copying of or from works intended to be "consumable" in the course of study or of teaching such as workbooks, exercises, and standardized tests and answer sheets and like material.

  3. Copying for the purpose of performance, except as in (1) above.

  4. Copying for the purpose of substituting for the purchase of music, except as in (1) and (2) above.

  5. Copying without inclusion of the copyright notice, which appears on the printed copy.


Thanks to Austin Community College for permission to use the information from their copyright pages.


Site content copyright 2009, Shoreline Community College.
This page last updated on 6/11/2007.
Questions or comments about the site? Contact us.
SCC Library Multi-Search


What is OSIS Search?