I. Introduction

In a world where knowledge is increasingly digital, the lines between accessible learning and copyright protection are often blurred. For many students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, digital copies of textbooks and resources from professors and libraries are essential. However, for publishers, these same resources represent potential lost revenue. This clash raises urgent questions about fair use in education—questions that go beyond the classroom to touch on issues of equity, access, and the evolving role of copyright in the digital age.

Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) has emerged as one approach to address this need, allowing libraries to lend digital copies of books one-for-one with their physical copies. CDL aims to provide educational access while respecting copyright, but the model is controversial. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive launched the “National Emergency Library” to support remote learners by temporarily suspending loan limits. This initiative, however, quickly sparked a lawsuit from major publishers who argued that unrestricted access threatened their market and undermined copyright protections¹. The case has since become a flashpoint, highlighting an urgent question: how can fair use adapt to support equitable education while respecting the rights of creators?

As law professor Peter Jaszi aptly put it, “Copyright law is supposed to strike a balance between rewarding creativity and ensuring that essential knowledge is available to those who need it”². Yet, achieving this balance in the digital era is far from straightforward. The demands of modern education call for a fair use doctrine that can keep pace with technological change, supporting accessible education without eroding the rights of copyright holders. The stakes of this debate are high, affecting not just students and educators, but the future of learning in an increasingly digital world.

II
The Foundations of Fair Use

Balancing creators’ rights to works and public need for knowledge, based on positive and natural law traditions, fair use emerges as the equilibrium point. According to L. Ray Patterson, fair use was never meant to vest rights to authors and creators absolutely-they are limited for a reason: copyright should serve the public interest.³ This is largely based on the core idea of the Statute of Anne of 1710, which sought to avoid monopolies in learning and make it available to the public. The American copyright laws reflect the pro-anti-monopolistic sentiment to which copyrights are construed as a social good that is balanced by both private and public interests.⁴

The U.S. defined fair use for purposes of education, scholarship, and criticism. As established in 1841 by Folsom v. Marsh⁵, the four considerations are purpose, character of the work, amount used, and effect on the market.

In Folsom, Justice Story’s opinion granted that fair use could be used to support education and research but only to the extent that this did not cause harm to the economic interest of the copyright holder⁶. This created a flexible fair use doctrine adaptive to societal needs, it provided a basis for allowing educational uses of copyrighted works without formal permission.⁷ Copyright law fair use expanded to embrace non-commercial education but made emphasis on accessing knowledge. Patterson continues to note that there is now embracement of personal study, classroom teaching, and research, all which are protected from rigorous copyright.⁸ This development is significant because access through the digital way has broadened what constitutes fair use but at the same time elicited concern for copyright owners regarding market influences.

Peter Jaszi underscores the importance of flexibility in fair use with the expansion of digital access in matters of public learning. According to him, the goal of the doctrine-to contribute towards learning and benefitting the public should guide its application in education despite changes of technology in the sharing of information.⁹ Some defining cases include Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.¹⁰ and Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.¹¹ , both of which clearly utilized transformative and non-commercial purpose to define fair use. The digital age has itself had landmark precedent on educational and research-based uses in cases such as Authors Guild v. Google¹² and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust¹³.

Major court decisions have moulded fair use in education to favour works that are transformative, not commercial, or relevant to accessibility. In Campbell, the Supreme Court ruled Live Crew’s parody of “Oh, Pretty Woman” was a fair use since it transformed the original work’s meaning into new meaning as well as social commentary. This case demonstrates that transformative uses—one that adds new ideas or purposes—are very strong fair use reasons. Indeed, this becomes vital for academic practices that conduct critical analysis or reinterpretation.

In Sony Corp, referred to as the “Betamax case,” the Court held that non-commercial purposes like those involved in recording TV shows off-the-air for personal consumption may be fair use if they do not appreciably harm the market. The favourable determination in this regard as applied to education and private study use-that they do not replace commercial sale of items-mirrors how fair use supports students and their libraries in obtaining the materials they want without setting the copyright owner’s prices too low.

The digital era has brought new concepts into fair use. Indeed, the court in Authors Guild v. Google ruled that the book database was transformative, considering how Google made keyword searches without granting full access to texts. The Court held that the project caused minimal damage to the market, thereby supporting digital education tools for partial access in research. Authors Guild v. HathiTrust expanded the reach of fair use to include accessible uses by allowing digitizing works for print-disabled users and searchability in digital archives. Taken together, these cases demonstrate how and when fair use can accommodate educational, transformative, and accessibility-oriented purposes, while still balancing the rights of creators with the public interest.

III
Challenges of Fair Use in Digital Era

As the world becomes a digital-first community for information, copyright law and fair use are subjects that play challenges against increasingly complex traditional boundaries. In education, fair use has long permitted any limited access to copyrighted works for purposes such as teaching, scholarship, and research. The ease of digital duplication and distribution, however has increased the need for balancing support for learning with market interests. This free sharing and reproduction of digital content with minimum restrictions are major concerns for copyright holders, because they could eventually erode the market. A good recent example of these challenges are present in the Internet Archive’s “National Emergency Library”: created during the COVID-19 pandemic with unrestricted digital access for millions of books, it caused major publishers to quickly file legal action against the move on grounds that it offended their rights to the market and went beyond traditional fair use.

The digital age has revolutionized considerably how content is accessed and distributed in educational institutions. The benefits of digital resources can be quite wide-ranging, from what the student, teacher, or researcher could enjoy to giving them unparalleled access to learning materials that are diverse. However, this comes with an increased likelihood of market impact since unrestricted sharing can reduce the direct purchase needs. Libraries and schools, trying to increase access, often work at cross purposes with copyright owners. L. Ray Patterson has made a compelling case that copyright statute was enacted early to prohibit monopolies and open up access to knowledge for the public; yet with modern digital technology, control over distribution capacity has broken down, thereby putting new stresses on fair use applications.

Controlled Digital Lending aims to balance competing interests under a “one-to-one” lending model, that is one digital copy for every physical copy the library owns. Advocates of CDL argue that such practice honours copyright because it mimics traditional lending criteria which rescind libre access. However, publishers argue that CDL decreases the demand for digital licenses and also poses a threat to their market when digitized copies become alternatives to physical and licensed editions. Peter Jaszi argues that although CDL reflects the basis of fair use in aiding public knowledge, it has been contentious and does not benefit from uniform legal support.

Traditionally, fair use has been seen as promoting education and scholarship if such damage to the market is minimal. In Sony Corp, the Supreme Court found that time-shifting technology-that is, recording television broadcasts-was fair use with emphasis placed on these facts: non-commercial uses having minor market impact are likely to qualify under the doctrine. Nevertheless, perhaps these issues trace back all the way to the Sony ruling, which predates the digital age. With copying and distribution being easier and market impact more immediate, courts and legislators question whether educational digital access should be based on fair use or licensing solutions.¹⁴

The COVID-19 pandemic launched the “National Emergency Library” by Internet Archive with free open digital access for millions of books. It was a stretch for CDL, and it helped stir a debate on digital fair use. It proposed to fulfil urgent educational needs within a global crisis by taking away traditional restrictions in allowing access to a digital copy without one to one with a physical book. This new version of CDL caused publishers, including Hachette, HarperCollins, and Penguin Random House, to take legal action against it, alleging that it infringed on their right to control the distribution of this material and imperilled the digital market they had developed. As the court noted, this would likely eliminate market demand for physical and licensed copies, harming the purposes of fair use provisions limiting market harm.

CDL operates under the “owned-to-loaned” principle, meaning that an individual library may only lend a digital copy if it owns the physical book, just like in traditional lending. While proponents of the model consider such an approach as respecting copyright, publishers and copyright holders counter that even modest digital lending could cannibalize sales, especially as more and more users are looking for online content. CDL appears to advocate for education access but puts much more complicated discussion about the market impact of fair use and sustainability concerning the digital era.¹⁵

At the very least, the complaint highlights the importance of market harm in fair use analysis under four elements of the Folsom v. Marsh test of 1841. Courts have held, as the Second Circuit did in Authors Guild v. Google in 2015, that limited, transformative access by digital means, such as Google’s “snippet view,” qualify as fair use because of their educational value and lack of market displacement. For instance, the model of access established by the National Emergency Library, offering unlimited access, with no borrowing limits to compete with the publishing industry, was thus testing the limits of CDL and fair use.¹⁶

The Internet Archive case specifically cries out for far more open guidelines on fair use in this digital age, particularly in education. These access models take the traditional scope of fair use way too far and leave educational institutions with a tendency to expose themselves to more lawsuits. Without defined boundaries, libraries, universities, and digital repositories have to navigate through several knots of copyright regulations while navigating between access requirements and market impacts.

More questions are associated with whether fair use should be changed with regard to innovations in technology or whether it should remain confined within established restraints. Peter Jaszi and other thinkers claim that the static aspect of culture and education will follow fair use, and its purpose is to remain open to allow access to knowledge, just as in the past (Jaszi, 2010). However, flexibility introduces ambiguity that could be alleviated, according to some, by strengthening licensing solutions complementary to fair use. Licensing offers a defined, legal means of accessing educational resources without copyright dilution but is too expensive for financially strapped institutions. Game developer Gabe Newell would say that piracy is an issue of licensing, not price, so once licenses are too restrictive or too difficult to apply, then universities don’t have an alternative but rely on fair use for access.

The Internet Archive case shows how CDL and digital fair use belong to the future of access to learning. However, in a constantly evolving world, copyright law must adapt to new technologies through more consistent requirements regarding CDL and licensing structures to ensure respect for both educational needs and creators’ rights within these solutions, thus immunizing fair use as an appropriate balance to support access equity in the digital world.

IV
Examining Licensing Models

In the contemporary world, it is even much more crucial to have easy-to-use educational resources, considering the fact that schools are increasingly relying on digital versions of books and materials. Under traditional fair use law, some limited copying of copyrighted works is allowed; however, the Controlled Digital Lending and licensing models provide very structured ways of meeting access needs in ways that respect copyright. CDL is designed to emulate conventional ways of library book lending. It was very important when it was impossible to visit a library, for instance when COVID-19 was spreading around the world, but many still argue against it from the legal position. Licensing models are simple and ensure that copyright owners get paid, but too often they become prohibitive for institutions with thin purses. Whereas in education, it can be said that CDL solves the problem of fair use, the similar shortcomings and implications of digital access for both exist.

Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) allows libraries to lend out digital copies of books in the same way they lend physical copies. This means that for each physical book, there can be one digital copy available to borrow. CDL was created to help with the growing need for digital resources, especially when people can’t access physical books, like during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to supporters, CDL obeys copyright laws due to its maintenance of an “owned-to-loaned” ratio. This enables libraries to distribute essential information for education without having unlimited digital copies. However, the critics include the publishers, who claim that CDL can reduce the need for licensed digital copies, which will negatively affect the digital market. Publishers also argue that CDL is an illegal copy. There is no court support, and it threatens the institutions with uncertainty that rely on them.¹⁷

While CDL provides libraries with access to digital content, licensing models give libraries the legal window into the digital materials through content sharing with limitations. Licensing ensures that the copyright holders are paid while providing institutions with a safe yet pricey access pathway to digital resources.¹⁸ This model clarifies confusion for fair use claims. Licensing fees are often very high, increasing a gap in access between well-funded and less-funded education places (Association of Research Libraries, 2019). Many licenses are not flexible enough, which can limit how materials may be used within class, such as sharing parts of texts or modifying resources for students with disabilities.

Due to the constraints of CDL and licensing models, a reasonable approach that combines fair use with accessible license choices might be suitable for both schools and copyright owners. CDL provides limited access to content but lacks clear or stable legal protection. Licensing can be safe but expensive and limiting in what is available. Funding for licensing programs in schools may include financial assistance so the digital resources are cheaper and easier to use within the classroom. Changes in laws could help make fair use a better and clearer rule to guide use, making the licensing costs irrelevant in some cases. Mixing fair use with custom licensing options could create a balanced system that helps people access education while protecting the rights of copyright holders. This would ensure a fairer way to learn digitally.

V
Exploring Practical Fair Use Limits

With increased use by schools and colleges of digital resources, limits of fair use must be decided unequivocally. These preserve balance between education needs and the rights of those holding copyrights. Fair use is an elastic concept and, like information and educational circumstances, it changes with the digital world. The good fair use in education reduces its effects on the market, focuses on new uses of material, and offers flexibility for urgent situations. By basing fair use limits on these ideas, schools can continue to utilize digital resources while meeting the requirements of copyright laws.

Another very important dimension of fair use analysis is market impact. Free access to copyrighted materials can seriously hurt publishers and authors because the causes may well include reduced sales and income loss. Obviously, fair use was not intended to displace the commercial market. Free access to entire texts may make people less likely to buy at all-especially for, say, textbooks. Neil Netanel holds the view that fair use of content in educational affairs should be partial copies, such as chapters or excerpts, but not the full texts. This will allow access to crucial information without harming the market or reducing the demand for sales made through licensable ones.¹⁹ This method also makes the resources of education financially sound. Besides, it includes safeguards against equalizing or opening the marketplace fairly.

The recent Internet Archive case shows how important it is to think about market impact when setting limits on fair use. Started during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive’s “National Emergency Library” allowed users limitless access to millions of digital books at the same time, many of which still had copyright protection.

This led directly to the problems in education, but resulted in a lawsuit from huge publishers who argued that it would remove the need for users to buy e-books and thus to allow getting books for free. According to Robin Schard, this unbridled access thrust fair use too far and reveals that fair use has to take into account the money interests of copyright owners, especially when giving full-text access.

Among the central ideas in fair use about education is transformative use – material is employed in new ways that give them new meaning, context, or insight. Transformative uses are identical with critique, commentary, or analysis; these provide special educational value that goes beyond the merely clear copying of materials.

In Campbell, the Supreme Court ruled that such parodies which are themselves works of extra expression would not cause any harm to a product’s market since they provide different purposes or social values. The case established an important precedent; transformative use is the element of fair use, especially education, that often reinterprets material to stimulate discussion or provide some critical analysis, rather than to replace the work.

Fair use, therefore, allows individuals within schools to ingest materials in some ways that add new educational value other than mere copying. For instance, students can be allowed to read parts of narratives to discover themes, discuss techniques or perform such other studies that don’t affect the commercial market. This is because, as the calls of Peter Jaszi go, transformative use is essential because it serves educational purposes without harming the commercial market. This means that students can use the works in a way that does not harm their commercial values.

Contextual Flexibility

In crisis times, it is impossible to have physical resources, so education has to be fair in its use. The most recent crisis was the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused huge problems for schools because most of the students learning were unable to access the Internet. In this respect, “National Emergency Library” by Internet Archive allowed access to books online and helped those who could not visit actual physical libraries. Although the initiative was controversial, it really brings out how fair use can transform in special situations to fulfil the needs of the public. There is a development of fair use over time to suit the needs of society, especially where resources are scarce. L. Ray Patterson asserts that fair use is determined by what the public wants and, hence, helps it adapt to circumstances that force it to endure hardships in accessing resources.²⁰ Temporary rules allowing limited online access to important educational materials may be helpful for schools in meeting their teaching goals without causing big changes in the market in emergencies. Once people can physically access these materials again, these special rules will stop, showing how fair use can be flexible in unusual situations while still respecting copyright laws over time.

VI
Future Directions for Fair Use in Education

As the accessibility of digital resources for education increases, libraries, educational institutions, and lawmakers are increasingly taking part in shaping the future of fair use while striking a balance between education requirements and copyright protections. Libraries and institutions are playing a critical role in advocating for a fair use model that will ensure a sustainable access. Furthermore, new demands are being placed upon reforms of legislation that will bring clarity to the bounds of fair use in a digitized environment, thereby easing more accessible education as well as the rights of copyright holders. Aligning advocacy with legislative efforts will require creating a copyright framework that can grow to meet the unique needs posed by digitalized forms of education.

Libraries and schools are prime organizations that define what constitutes fair use, providing access to resources for students and teachers. For decades, they have supported the flexibility of fair use as a mechanism to ensure public access to knowledge while respecting copyright. That is the advocacy, one more focused on expansion of accessibility while still upholding respect for market rights of copyright holders. Peter Jaszi asserts that the importance of libraries lies not only in setting an ethical basis for digital lending akin to Controlled Digital Lending but also as a partner with publishers for sustainable models of access.

Libraries can partner with publishers to set a clear limit of fair use and copyright. One-to-one, CDL-type models honour fair use and copyright. Controlled digital book loans model of CDL works within the limits of access prevalent in traditional libraries. Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive disclosed that CDL is controversial and which services harm the market for licensed copies, according to the publishers. Libraries can reach out to the publishers to negotiate terms regarding access digital means in a fair use manner while still requiring licensed resources.

Libraries and institutions can partner to establish shared digital repositories that would help share costs and resources of licenses. That would mean decreasing digital access costs hence reducing the burden on individual libraries to fund items considered necessary. Libraries and schools can promote the fair use movement so that the growth of access to learning becomes possible and resolves issues related to copyright. Work together with others like ARL: Association of Research Libraries advocating for electronic lending and fair use in education.

Institutional advocacy is much needed, but there are more important reforms in the legislative domain about clarifying fair use for digital education today. Copyright law carries much baggage from a print-centred era and is now struggling to keep up with the nuances of digitals. Flexibility is the hallmark of fair use, although clearer laws might reduce uncertainty and empower educational institutions to use them more confidently. A digitized education proposal that defines fair use may ensure sustainable access with respect to copyright holders’ rights.

One such legislative reform would be the addition of a digital lending license so that libraries can then make on-demand digital access to copyrighted works available without worrying about fair use issues. Such a digital lending license would enable libraries to make limited, born-digital access to a work available under fair use-for example, single-user access, no downloads. It would permit the continued lawful operation of libraries while compensating copyright owners to provide stable access digitally. Neil Netanel thinks that structured licensing solutions are the most predictable and provide a reliable way for institutions to get access.

There is a possibility that changes in legislation can be made to allow for fair use in emergency situations. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it abundantly clear that flexible access is necessary as institutions have started looking towards digital resources. Temporary provisions for widening fair use in emergencies would improve public access when physical copies are inaccessible. This “National Emergency Library” by the Internet Archive called for flexible access policies during emergencies. Legislators may issue framework directives in digital access that outline allowable material and fair use access levels during national crises.

The ALA and ARL are advocating for legislative reforms in order to enhance fair use in digital education. They work with lawmakers to update copyright laws in order to better fit the needs of today’s education. The ARL has advocated for fair and respectful copyright policies to provide in digital access and respect the rights of their copyright holders by supporting open educational resources (OER) and fair use exceptions tailored for educational setting. This may lead to a balanced copyright framework by meeting education’s needs and copyright protections.

VII
Conclusion

Issues and opportunities in access in education require a commendably balanced approach towards the notion of fair use. The essay will analyse how the idea of fair use, from the very beginning, has covered the road to knowledge for education, teaching, and research, and scholarship. Contempt access and license models-models such as Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)-are increasingly questioning what limits fair use can reach. Fair use boundaries that respect the heart of what a fair use is while staying within copyrights would be those that reduce or minimize market harm, and this may show itself in some transformative applications-and perhaps even certain contextual adaptabilities.

Authors Guild v. Google and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust go to exemplify that transformative uses that give new meaning to a copyrighted work are harmonious with fair use principles, especially within the context of educational uses. Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive reveal the tension between market impact and digital accessibility, showing that the application of fair use requires a consideration of full-text access and its ability to substitute for traditional sales. It makes such efforts of institutional advocacy and legislative reform imperative to adapt fair use to meet such digital educational needs without compromising copyright’s core purpose of incentivizing creation.

Looking forward, fair use needs to remain abreast of educational and technological developments. Libraries and educational institutions must lead in promoting fair use standards that advance responsible digital access. Lawmakers will have to refine copyright laws so that they may allow better accommodations for educational uses. By balance, the educational sector hence pools all efforts with copyright holders into fostering sustainable access that benefits the creators and the learners, thus nicely striking out a balance between fair use and accessible licensing and the flexibility needed in emergencies. That equilibrium will be very vital in retaining the important role of fair use for the digital age by promoting knowledge while showing respect to those who create it.

FOOTNOTES:
1. Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive, No. 1:20-cv-04160 (S.D.N.Y. 2020).
2. Peter Jaszi, Fair Use and Education: The Way Forward, 2010.
3. L. Ray Patterson, Understanding Fair Use in Copyright Law, 1987.
4. Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright, 1993.
5. Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F. Cas. 342 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841).
6. L. Ray Patterson & Stanley W. Joyce, Copyright in Historical Perspective, 2003.
7. Neil Weinstock Netanel, Making Sense of Fair Use, 2008.
8. L. Ray Patterson, Understanding Fair Use in Copyright Law, 1987.
9. Supra note 2.
10. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994).
11. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984).
12. Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202 (2d Cir. 2015).
13. Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87 (2d Cir. 2014)
14. Supra note 7.
15. Supra note 2.
16. Supra note 7.
17. Robin Schard, Fair Use in the Digital Age, 2020.
18. Supra note 7.
19. Ibid.
20. Supra note 3.