Fair use is a doctrine in United States of America copyright laws. This doctrine allows limited use of copyrighted material. It does not require permission from the rights holder. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test. It is based around free speech rights which are provided by the First amendment of the U.S constitution. A rap band called 2 live crew took ideas from another artist for a song called Pretty Woman. In the 1960’s Roy Orbison and William Dees wrote a song called “Oh, Pretty Woman”. In 1989 2 Live Crew had an album called “As Clean As They Wanna Be”. One of the songs off the album is “Pretty Woman”. In this song, 2 Live Crew took the obvious bass riff from the original Orbison- Dees song and changed the lyrics. 2 live crew gave credit to Roy Orbison and William Dees on their album.In the case of Campbell versus Acuff-Rose Music the court looked at the factors of permissible fair use and determined that parody was indeed protected fair use, even though the perpetrators gained financially . The fair use doctrine was highlighted in 1994 for the Supreme Court to see, of course due to 2 live crew. http://www.benedict.com/Audio/Crew/Crew.aspx
