Fair use

The US copyright defence that weighs four factors: purpose and transformativeness, nature of the work, amount used and market effect 1. Courts apply it to AI training case by case; results so far turn on how the data was acquired and on each record.

Developed in
ch. 20, US training cases, dated
Chapters
ch. 20, Existing Law
Contrast with
TDM exception
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Fair use: mentions per chapter5 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter20 Existing Law: 5 mentions20 Existing Law5No mentions in the other 22 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Fair use: mentions per chapter5 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter0001020304050607081011121314151617181920 Existing Law: 5 mentions520212223Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Fair use per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map0No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0No
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0No
15 Deployment0No
16 Fairness & XAI0No
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act0No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law5Yes
21 AI Laws Worldwide0No
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents0No

Sources

  1. [1] 17 U.S.C. § 107, Limitations on exclusive rights: fair use (the four factors). Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 (verified: secondary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Fair use. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/fair-use. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026fairuse,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Fair use}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/fair-use}
}