Does fair use give me free reign to reuse any material I want without getting permission?

No. “Fair Use” is not a magic phrase you can invoke to excuse your use of someone else’s creative work. You cannot copy someone else’s work and then claim fair use.

What is considered “fair use” depends on the circumstances. Fair use protects creators who reuse copyrighted content in a few ways. Some oversimplified examples include:

• When the new work directly critiques and comments on existing works
• For educational or scholarly purposes
• To transform the source material into something new.

Determining fair use is more complicated than just a few general use-case examples, and we urge you to educate yourself before determining if you can claim fair use in your work.