Fair Use Question of the Month: Creating Artwork from Copyrighted Materials

Dear CMSI,

I am working on an installation. One of its main features will be a display with current websites of top news sources in different countries. It was also have a loop playing below it of headline news from the week before. Do I have to ask permission from anyone to build this material into my work?

Thanks,

Dieter

Dear Dieter,

You may want to consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts [2]to see if your uses are within the best practices of your field. For instance, your peers believe that you “may invoke fair use to incorporate copyrighted material into new artworks in any medium,” with some limitations. Those limitations include (among others) the importance of being able to say what you’re doing artistically with the copyrighted material and avoiding the implication that you are the author of the quoted material. Consult these limitations, and you will be able to make a confident fair use call.

Best,

CMSI