PIJIP’s Peter Jaszi and the Center for Social Media’s Pat Aufderheide, co-facilitated by UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Urban and Poetry Foundation’s Kate Coles, have just released a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry (PDF). The code is a resource for the poetry community, to help poets formulate and defend their creative decisions to forego rights clearance in favor of fair use. Creators like poets must be aware of and rely on fair use, so that their creative expressions are not always limited for fear of legal action by rights holders. The code contains seven principles where the doctrine of fair use applies, and is a culmination of eight meetings with working groups of poets, editors, publishers, and experts in copyright law and new media. It also provides a very useful explanation of the relevant portions of copyright and remarkably demystifies the fair use doctrine.
This document joins the Center for Social Media and PIJIP’s other fair use best practices guides: documentary filmmakers, media literacy teachers, online video creators, dance archivists, film scholars, communication scholars, creators of OpenCourseWare, with codes for research librarians and music samplers in progress, as well.
