Item Favoring Fair Use
Amount is appropriate for educational purpose
Explanation
Although there is no clear defintion of how much of a work is "appropriate" for educational purposes, Section 107 of the Copyright Law does define the moximum amount you can copy from a given work. However, if you only need 25 words from a poem, you should only copy those 25 words.
Regardless of how valuable additional text might be for your teaching, you cannot argue that it is somehow appropriate to copy more than these maximum limits.
- Poetry: (a) A complete poem if less than 250 words and if printed on not more than two pages or (b) from a longer poem, an excerpt of not more than 250 words.
- Prose: (a) Either a complete article, story or essay of less than 2,500 words, or (b) an excerpt from any prose work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less, but in any event a minimum of 500 words.
- (Each of the numerical limits stated in "i" and "ii" above may be expanded to permit the completion of an unfinished line of a poem or of an unfinished prose paragraph.)
- Illustration: One chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon or picture per book or per periodical issue.
- "Special" works: Certain works in poetry, prose, or in "poetic prose" which often combine language with illustrations and which are intended sometimes for children and at other times for a more general audience fall short of 2,500 words in their entirety. Paragraph "ii" above notwithstanding such "special works" may not be reproduced in their entirety; however, an excerpt comprising not more than two of the published pages of such special work and containing not more than 10% of the words found in the text thereof may be reproduced.
