Does “fair use” apply?

The doctrine of “fair use” under United States Copyright Law allows for the free use of copyrighted materials under certain circumstances for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

The determine of whether fair use applies in any instance requires a balancing of four factors.  There are no hard and fast rules to the application of fair use.  As a general approach, use only that amount of copyrighted material necessary for your intended purposes and attribute the source of the work whenever possible.  To determine whether fair use may apply to an item of third-party content in your project, consult the Fair Use Tool for guidance with that analysis.

If your particular use of the content does not qualify under fair use, you should continue to assume it will require rights clearance.