The study, which examined thousands of online videos across 75 sites, offers general guidelines for what constitutes “fair use” of copyrighted material: parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving, and pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups). The study’s authors,  American University professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, take care to say that merely claiming one of theses categories does not automatically indemnify users. The animating principle behind these practices is whether or not the material taken is somehow “transformative,” the authors say, meaning that the work must add some new value to what they take and use it for a purpose different from the original work.

The two call for the establishment of a committee made up of scholars, legal experts and content producers to codify a list of best practices. In the meantime, the authors have created a blog to move the discussion along. A quick summary of the report is available in the release.