What is Fair Use?

Fair use

allows the use of someone else’s work free of charge without the consent of the owner of the copyright property rights. Private fair use allows the possibility of using the work, including its reproduction for one’s own use or the use of close relatives. There is also public fair use, which is used in particular by schools, libraries and museums.

• PRIVATE FAIR USE

  – the right to use free of charge – without the author’s consent – ​​a work that has already been disseminated for one’s own personal use. This right covers the use of individual copies of works by a group of people in a personal relationship, in particular a relationship of kinship (persons related in a direct line: e.g. father and son, grandmother and granddaughter, or in a collateral line: e.g. aunt and nephew, brother and sister), affinity (a relationship between a spouse and the entire family of the other spouse) or a social relationship.

Accordingly:

• • You can legally use any protected resources (e.g. films, sheet music, photos, books) when you do so for your own, non-profit purposes, including developing your passion and self-development, e.g. making music at home. However, remember not to share any audio or audio-video recording online, during which you use someone else’s work, even if you record yourself practising playing an instrument or singing rehearsals.
  • You can copy fragments or the entire book for your own needs or those of your closest friends and family. Remember not to offer to resell photocopies to anyone.
  • You can modify any work, i.e. introduce your own changes to it, without asking for the consent of the owner of the copyright property rights, as long as you do not distribute such work in any way, i.e. on the Internet or another publicly accessible place.

• PUBLIC FAIR USE

  – the right to use works covered by copyright by a specific group of entities. Such action may take place in certain circumstances specified in the Act and is justified by socially significant goals.

• PUBLIC FAIR USE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES:

Art. 27 para. 1 of the Act on Copyright and Related Rights indicates that educational institutions may, for the purposes of illustrating content provided for teaching purposes or in order to conduct their own research, to use disseminated works in original and in translation, and to make copies of disseminated minor works or fragments of larger works not exceeding 25% of the volume of the work,provided that such use is not profit-making and takes place under the responsibility of these institutions, on their premises or elsewhere, or through a secure electronic environment accessible, thanks to the use of authentication procedures, only to those learning and teaching or conducting scientific activities in a given institution.

The principles indicated below, therefore, apply to both teachers and students.

The use of a given work in school is permitted, provided that it achieves a didactic purpose, which is to familiarise oneself with the work or to acquire new skills using it. Therefore, when organising a film evening or a school performance, it is worth paying attention to whether the selected repertoire meets this condition. Remember not to broadcast the aforementioned school events, because permitted educational use is limited to activities within the boundaries of educational institutions.

Accordingly:

• • You can legally use any resources (e.g. films, sheet music, photos, books), regardless of their source, as long as you do it during lessons or other school activities. Therefore, you can only distribute these resources among students and teachers. This also applies to organising various events at school, where, for example, you share a film or fragments of books for teaching purposes. Only students and teachers can come to such a screening. You can also use a recording of such a screening, only on the condition that the recording is made for archival purposes and will not be made publicly available, e.g. on the school’s website, YouTube, or sent to a group of people outside the group of teachers and students.
  • You can legally duplicate (photocopy, scan and send by e-mail, record on data carriers) fragments of any works (films, books, music) to your students and use them for educational purposes. However, remember not to share these materials with people outside the group of students, including on publicly available websites for download.
  • During school events (performances, presentations), you can perform any piece of music without asking the creators for permission and without having to obtain the appropriate licenses and pay the creators. Remember, however, that admission to such an event must be free of charge, and any recording of such a performance cannot be distributed outside the school, i.e. placed on the Internet and made available to people outside the group of students and teachers.
  • As part of classes or school events, you can modify any piece of music, i.e. make changes to it (e.g. in poems, songs, photographs), without asking for permission from the rights holders, as long as you do not distribute these pieces in any way outside the school.
  • Remember not to share copies of a large piece of music (e.g. a book) among students. However, students themselves, for their own, private use, have the right to photocopy even an entire book.
  • You can legally use sheet music during rehearsals and performances of the school choir or orchestra, when the event is not recorded or made available on the Internet and when participation in it is limited only to teachers and students, and admission is free of charge. This also applies to the use of sheet music during instrument lessons that take place on school premises.

• PUBLIC FAIR USE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES:

For the purposes of informing about current events (e.g. as part of running a school newspaper), you can use fragments of works used during these events – e.g. in an article about a vernissage or exhibition that your class attended, you can use photos showing copyrighted works.

• PUBLIC FAIR USE – RIGHT TO QUOTE:

You can use fragments of other people’s works (or small works in their entirety) when creating your own, using the right to quote. This is possible, for example, when writing a master’s, bachelor’s or doctoral thesis, where it is necessary to use the scientific achievements of your predecessors. When preparing a master’s, bachelor’s or doctoral thesis, you may use the right to quote. It allows you to include a fragment of another work in your own work. Such action is legal if you observe a few rules:

• • you can use the right to quote provided you mention the name and surname of the creator and provide the source;
  • you can only quote for the needs of your own work;
  • the fragment of another work that is included in this way must be legally distributed (i.e., for example, it was taken from a legally published book);
  • the regulations do not specify how large a fragment can be quoted, but you certainly cannot quote the entire work in this way, unless it is small or we are dealing with a photographic or artistic work, in which case it is permissible to quote even the entire work;
  • the use of the right to quote must be justified by an explanation of the work in question, its critical analysis or teaching, or defined by the laws of the genre of creativity.