Woodinville Whiskey: What is the doctrine of fair use and how should it be applied online?

According to the book, “Under American law, it is derived from the Constitution as a protection established for the benefit of the public, and within jurisprudence, It has been applied with certain limitations created for the public’s benefit. Chief among these protections are the doctrines of fair use and of first sale. Fair use consists of the ability to copy without cost reasonable portions of protected material for purposes relating to such public activities as education, news reporting, and editorial comment. Under conventional law, the doctrine of first sale limits the ability of a copyright holder to obtain profit from the sale of his/her work after initial time at which the material is sold.” This is the definition about “doctrine of fair use”. In the other word, the doctrine of fair use is a guideline which allows students, researchers, educators and others to use copyright without any paying and permission. They still need to be careful because what they use might challenge fair use.

When people use others people’s online articles, picture, comments and video, we should quote their website or authors’ name. For example, I have a friend who copied other people’s comment, she deleted the author’s name, and post on her Facebook’s notes. In this case she is illegal to use other people’s material. This is the bad example of fair use. I think that no matter the website didn’t state that the materials were protected by copyright, we still need to quote the website to make sure that we won’t get in the lawsuit.

Also, since so many people don’t really know about fair use, I suggests that website in the bottom should quote the fair use and copy right law which allows others to understand this law. For example in the Woodinville Whiskey’s website, they should post this law in the bottom of the webpage and also when they show the drinks receipt, they put the companies name in the receipt, so that whenever people try to copy the receipt to the social media, they will see the company’s name in the receipt which people won’t get in the trouble about fair use.