Constant Content

I'm planning on using excerpts from famous speeches in an assignment I'm doing on public speaking. Are certain speeches, such as presidential inaugural addresses, considered public domain? I plan on using a few paragraphs of each speech which are a small portion of the larger speech. At which point does an excerpt exceed fair use? Is there a percentage guideline such as no more than 7% or something like that? The speeches I plan on quoting are:
Churchill's Never Give in Never, Never, Never
Kennedy's Ask Not
King's I have a Dream
Obama's 2004 DNC Keynote address

This is the information I found on using speeches:
d. U.S. Government Works

"Any work created by a U.S. government employee or officer is in the public domain, provided that the work is created in that person's official capacity. For example, during the 1980s a songwriter used words from a speech by then-President Ronald Reagan as the basis for song lyrics. The words from the speech were in the public domain and permission was not required from Ronald Reagan. Keep in mind that this rule applies only to works created by federal employees, and not to works created by state or local government employees. However, state and local laws and court decisions are in the public domain."

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_a ... 8/8-a.html

I think those that you specified should be fine to use. As I'm sure you know, just credit with the name and date of the speech.

Ed

Thanks Ed, I appreciate it. I thought that presidential speeches probably were public domain so this confirmation is good to know for future reference. Maybe Churchill's been dead long enough, too or a similar law exists for Europe. If it were just a few lines, I'd have no concerns, but some of the exceprts are several paragraphs long. They are being used for educational purposes as this is a course on public speaking, so hopefully that plus appropriate attribution should be okay under fair use rules. I could probably break the longer excerpts up with commentary such as "Notice the use of ethos here" or "notice how this line appeals to the audience's emotion." I'm not sure I want to intrude like that though. I'll leave it as is for now and think about it some more.

Fair Use laws usually cover using even copyrighted works for educational purposes. As for teaching material, research papers, speeches, presentations - if it is used in an educational capacity it's okay. I don't think the DMCA altered any of those laws except for one in particular. If you bypass any security or encryption on any digital media, even though the material is covered under Fair Use, you have still broken the law by circumventing the copyright protections.

Speeches should be no problem.