Most quotations, because of their short size, are not considered copyright infringement because they fall under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law. "Fair use" of copyrighted materials is formally determined by a court of law when one party sues another for copyright infringement.
Courts have generally relied on a four-factor test for whether or not a given "use" of copyrighted materials is "fair":
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit, educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The Wikiquote resource appears to fall under acceptable and fair usage based on the first criterion shown above, in that the purpose of the quotations on Wikiquote is educational, and Wikiquote is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikipedia articles may also include quotations, images, or other media under the U.S. Copyright law "fair use" doctrine in accordance with our guidelines for non-free content. In Wikipedia, such "fair use" material should be identified as from an external source by an appropriate method (on the image description page, or history page, as appropriate; quotations should be denoted with quotation marks or block quotation in accordance with Wikipedia's manual of style). This leads to possible restrictions on the use, outside of Wikipedia, of such "fair use" content retrieved from Wikipedia: this "fair use" content does not fall under the CC BY-SA or GFDL license as such, but under the "fair use" (or similar/different) regulations in the country where the media are retrieved.
Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. In all cases, an inline citation following the quote or the sentence where it is used is required. Copyrighted text that is used verbatim must be attributed with quotation marks or other standard notation, such as block quotes. Any alterations must be clearly marked, i.e., [brackets] for added text, an ellipsis (e.g.(...)) for removed text, and emphasis noted after the quotation as "(emphasis added)" or "(emphasis in the original)".
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement.
The best way to understand the flexible principle of fair use is to review actual cases decided by the courts. Below are summaries of a variety of fair use cases.
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.
Essentially, the doctrine excuses copying that would otherwise be infringement. For example, it allows authors to quote from other authors' work or to reproduce small amounts of graphic or pictorial material for purposes of review or criticism or to illustrate or buttress their own points. Authors invoking fair use should transcribe accurately and give credit to their sources. They should not quote out of context, making the author of the quoted passage seem to be saying something opposite to, or different from, what was intended.
,_ca._1902_(CH_18446625-2).jpg)