The exclusive rights granted to a copyright holder can be at tension with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, in that certain free expressions may employ what is considered "Fair Use" of another's work for the purposes of political speech, parody, and other permissible uses. There is no bright-line rule for what constitutes "Fair Use", and the courts weight several factors before extending the "Fair Use" defense to copyright infringement, including:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.