fair use

fair use n. the noncompetitive right to use of copyrighted material without giving the author the right to compensation or to sue for infringement of copyright. With the growing use of copy machines, teachers and businesses copy articles, pages of texts, charts, and excerpts for classroom use, advice to employees, or assisting in research without violating the copyright. For example, Professor Elmer Smedley makes 100 copies of a photograph from Time magazine of starving Somalians to illustrate to his students the deprivations in Africa (which is fair use), but then Smedley publishes a book Africa on the Brink, and uses the photograph in a chapter on starvation (not fair use), and is responsible to the photographer for a royalty. (See: copyright)