In my collaborative essay for our second portfolio, my partner and I talk a lot about fair use. On the copyright website, to be defined as fair use, the following needs to be considered :
- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
- The nature of the copyrighted work
- The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
- The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
In my collaborative essay we looked at Pinterest as a case study. A Pinterest user myself, I found it hard to find Pinterest as a form of copyright infringement. I think that Pinterest falls under fair use because when something is pinned or re-pinned, it means something different to each user pinning it. I also find that Pinterest helps increase the market for a work and helps to better expose original creators. What do you think?
Fair use, yes, quite pinteresting. I think a pretty clear case can be made for numbers 1 and 4 for any incident of pinning. For number 1, it’s clear that the nature of the use is non-commercial; most likely recreational. As you say in your post, freely sharing content could in fact increase the market for what is shared. Thus, in number 4, we have Pinterest incurring no negative effects on the market for what is shared.
From what I understand, fair use is generally used for private or academic settings. I would not consider Pinterest to fall under either of those categories. But I do agree that Pinterest helps give publicity/a new audience to creators, so perhaps some leniency can/should be given to Pinterest for this reason.