Question

Ellen, who runs a successful nail salon, ran across a very interesting pamphlet on customer relations. The pamphlet was fifty pages long and cost $70. Ellen thought the price was outrageous. Accordingly, she bought one copy and photocopied the pages that she thought were pertinent and gave them to her employees. She copied forty of the pages out of the pamphlet for each of her twenty employees. A disgruntled employee informed the publisher of the pamphlet of what Ellen had done and she was charged with copyright infringement. Ellen defended on the basis of the fair-use doctrine.List the four factors a court would consider in determining whether a violation occurred. Also, give your reasoned opinion as to whether Ellen is entitled to fair-use protection.

Answer 1

Answer: Please refer to Explanation

Step-by-step explanation:

Fair Use Doctrine is a legal provision in the United States for the use of copyrighted material. The law allows one to use limited copyrighted materials without permission from the owner so long as they use only a limited amount.

In determining a violation, the court uses the following criteria ;

1. . The Purpose and Character of the use.

2. The Nature of the Copyrighted work.

3. The Amount and Substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

4. The Effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Based on the above criteria, I believe that Ellen will be found guilty of a violation because she went against each of them.

The purpose of the copyright violation was not from a good place, rather she only did it because she thought the prices were outrageous. She therefore did it to save money at the expense of the Publisher.

She also copied 40 pages out of 50 which is 80% of the work. That is a substantial amount of the work and cannot be considered limited.

Also by using the work without payment, she caused a negative effect in the market because the Publisher lost money back of her and a transaction did not occur that could benefit the market.

For these reasons I do not think Ellen is entitled to Fair-use Protection.