Fair Dealing

Fair dealing is a set of limited exceptions to copyright law. It lets you use someone else's copyrighted work in certain situations without asking for permission, as long as the use is genuinely fair. If your copying would significantly affect the copyright owner, for example by taking away sales, it is not fair dealing.

What the exceptions cover

• Non-commercial research or private study: you can copy a short excerpt to help you learn or investigate a topic, such as a few paragraphs of an online encyclopaedia entry for an assignment. Copying or reposting the whole work goes beyond this.
• Criticism, review or quotation: you can quote parts of a work when you are analysing or judging it, as long as you credit the creator. A board game reviewer might quote one confusing sentence from a rulebook while explaining why it is unclear.
• Reporting current events: a news site can quote a short part of a public speech in a report about a local decision. The exception does not cover photographs, which need permission separately.
• Teaching: a teacher can show or copy extracts for non-commercial instruction, such as projecting a single map from an atlas while explaining coastal erosion.
• Copies for disabled people: if someone cannot read or hear a work because of a disability, an accessible copy can be made for them, such as an easy-read museum leaflet.
• Time shifting: you can record a broadcast to watch or listen to at a more convenient time.
• Parody, caricature or pastiche: you can make a humorous imitation of a work, such as a funny spoof of a famous advert's jingle.

The limit that matters most

Fair dealing does not let you take another person's work and build it into something new that you share widely. Using a wildlife charity's illustration as a character in your own comic fits none of the exceptions, and the charity loses the chance to sell or license that artwork. The use has to fall inside one of the exceptions above, such as a short quotation you have credited.