The Visual Resources Association has released its own code of best practices in fair use. It will be enormously valuable to art teachers, librarians, curators, publishers and more.
The Statement well describes the need for professionals working with image resources to know their free speech rights in regard to fair use:
“Uncertainty surrounding the ability to rely on fair use had a tangible negative impact on teaching, research, and study: for example, some faculty and students do not have access to the images they need for pedagogical purposes because the images cannot be licensed and because these individuals are unsure of the boundaries of fair use. In other instances, individual institutions are uncertain about their ability legally to preserve image collections and to migrate them to new formats. In still other cases, some graduate students are tailoring their doctoral dissertation and thesis choices based on perceived licensing barriers.”
What It Covers
The Statement should allow students, faculty, and other professionals to get back to work. It describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use.