ARL Hosts Briefing on Fair Use & Research Innovation for Congressional Staffers

Last Updated on March 4, 2025, 11:18 am ET

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) hosted a Fair Use Week briefing for congressional staffers on February 25, 2025, featuring Ali Sternburg, vice president, Information Policy, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA); Brandon Butler, executive director, Re:Create Coalition; and Emily Sherwood, university librarian, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Libraries. Key points are below.

Brandon Butler, Emily Sherwood, Katherine Klosek, and Ali Sternburg (left to right)

Fair Use Has Never Been Stronger

Fair use is an important doctrine in US copyright law that allows for the use of copyrighted works in certain situations, without permission from a copyright holder. Courts have affirmed the fair uses made by researchers in STEM and humanities fields, documentary filmmakers, entrepreneurs, and even congressional staffers every day.

US Copyright Law Can Address AI Without Amendment

Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) principles explain that US copyright law is flexible and robust enough to address issues that arise at the intersection of AI and copyright. The principles are based on case law like Authors Guild v. Google, in which the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that Google’s scanning of millions of copyrighted books was transformative and lawful because it created a searchable database of books without providing the public with a substantial substitute for the original books. This ruling is part of the rich body of law that courts can apply to the dozens of cases on AI and fair use making their way through the courts.

Fair Use Supports American Innovation and Economic Growth

Fair use fosters economic growth in industries like journalism, and media,  and information technology. Industries that rely on fair use generated $5.6 trillion in revenue according to a 2017 study on Fair Use in the US Economy, a research series by CCIA that examines the value of fair use to the US economy and its importance to copyright law for the digital age.

Fair Use Gives the US Research Enterprise a Competitive Edge

Researchers across disciplines rely on fair use to access and analyze a broad range of materials, with no limit to the scope of their inquiry. With fair use, researchers can conduct computational analysis on large datasets to identify trends in health outcomes; bring new understanding of American cultural heritage by studying historical texts, footage, music, and images; and share and collaborate on research materials, which decreases the time and cost for innovative research. Studies show that countries with strong fair use protections produce more text and data mining research than those with narrower exceptions.

How Lawmakers Can Protect Fair Use

ARL, CCIA, and the Re:Create Coalition are glad to be a resource as congressional staffers and lawmakers consider how proposed legislation around AI, digital replicas, news, and other topics might affect fair use. For instance, while transparency is important to increase trust and enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand the data used in training AI models, some proposed legislation includes requirements to track owners of datasets that may be used in training AI models, which is infeasible for researchers to comply with.

Resources

• FairUseWeek.org (ARL)
• Fair Use in the US Economy (CCIA)
• Fair Use on the Hill (Re:Create Coalition)
• Legal Reform to Enhance Global Text and Data Mining Research (Science)
• Library Copyright Alliance Principles for Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (LCA)
• Transparency in AI Model Training Data (CCIA)

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