The following excerpt is from: Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts (2015), College Art Association, p. 23.
PRINCIPLE
Artists may invoke fair use to incorporate copyrighted material into new artworks in any medium, subject to certain limitations:
Limitations
- Artists should avoid uses of existing copyrighted material that do not generate new artistic meaning, being aware that a change of medium, without more, may not meet this standard.
- The use of a preexisting work, whether in part or in whole, should be justified by the artistic objective, and artists who deliberately repurpose copyrighted works should be prepared to explain their rationales both for doing so and for the extent of their uses.
- Artists should avoid suggesting that incorporated elements are original to them, unless that suggestion is integral to the meaning of the new work.
- When copying another’s work, an artist should cite the source, whether in the new work or elsewhere (by means such as labeling or embedding), unless there is an articulable aesthetic basis for not doing so.
