So... what exactly are Copyright and Fair Use? Ever wonder?

Often working against the idea of remix is copyright. Copyright is a law that gives the original creator of a work the exclusive rights to reproduce that work, and determine who else may use and reproduce that work. Imagine that you work for hours on a paper for school and post it on Digital Dialogue. When you gather together as a class to critique each others' work, you find that other students in the class have taken parts of your paper and put them into their own paper, some changing it slightly, some using it word for word, but not citing your paper in any way. How would you feel? Most of us seem to agree situations such as this or plagiarism are wrong, so why do we often forget copyright?  Though these two things aren't exactly the same, they do both involve the same principles: using someone else's work--and legally protected work, in the case of copyright--without permission. So to hardcore copyright believers, remix is often an abomination.

The mediator between these two worlds is fair use. Fair use puts some restriction and limitation on the exclusivity of copyright, allowing for people to have a limited use on things that are copyrighted. This includes uses such as for news reporting, education, research, criticism, and other things. However, just because your use falls into one of these categories doesn't mean you're automatically given free-reigns to pull the fair use card. To fall under fair use, your purpose of using the content must match four categories: 1) Is it being used to make money or any other forms of business or not? 2) It sometimes depends on the kind of copyrighted material actually is. 3) How much/what portion of the work you're actually using. 4) How/how much your use of the copyrighted material will affect its value or how much the owner could potentially make on it.If your purpose checks out okay with all of these points, then you're most likely good to go. And as we discuss here and portray in our interactive remix of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you can potentially use or remix certain materials for good, even educational purposes--even to educate about copyright.