Q: Fair use to generate transcripts of others' YouTube videos for purposes of research?
I am a doctoral candidate conducting research on social media, specifically the YouTube platform. Is it fair use for me to prepare transcripts of publicly accessible YouTube videos that I am not the creator of for the purposes of research? The transcripts will not be re-sold, but strictly used for my research. My research findings may be published in peer-reviewed academic journals and books.
Due to the volume of videos of interest, I am considering paid transcription services such as Rev or Scribbie. Both have limited liability clauses in their terms of service protecting them from any sort of copyright infringement, of course.
But is it fair use for me to pay for transcription services that will transcribe publicly accessible YouTube videos for the purposes of research?
A:
This appears to be a classic Fair Use and if you aren't using it for commercial purposes, the factors of Fair Use should lean toward allowing your use. My initial two cents is that you are fine.
I'd probably want to give credit to Youtube and the content creators in your research.
Tim Akpinar agrees with this answer
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