Fair Use & Libraries - Fact Check - What If I Need to Copy An Entire Work?

In reality, your use is fair if the amount that you take is the right amount for your transformative purpose and sometimes that means the whole thing. Sometimes you need the whole thing to do what you want to do so artists who will take the entire image and draw all over it, right? And they needed that image they needed the whole original they needed the whole original before they could start their product they have to use the whole thing. You know, there is a Supreme Court case where Two Live Crew took the song "Oh Pretty Woman" and rewrote it as a kind of parody of pretty women, about a big hairy woman, right? They had to take basically the whole thing - they took the chorus, the music. It is the song "Pretty Woman". But that's how much they needed for their purpose and the court said as much in their decision that if you need the whole thing to parody the whole thing, take it. And so that's the way fair use works. You can have as much of the thing as you need for your new purpose. Now, you shouldn't take too much, right? So you should think about why you're doing what you're doing: What use is this material to my transformative purpose? And tailor how much you use. Don't take more than you need 'cause that's going to undermine your case. But sometimes you need the whole thing, and it's just a myth that you can't take the whole thing when you need it.