When English Prof. Carol Shloss started work on her biography of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia, she scoured primary source documents on the author for information relevant to her research.

But when the estate of James Joyce caught wind of the project, they “went out of their way to threaten” both Shloss and her publisher, according to Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School.

As a result, the publisher cut as much as ten percent of Prof. Shloss’ content, which she instead posted on a Web site.

From there, the legal battle ramped up.

“We want an order by the court that holds that Shloss’ Web site does not infringe on the estate’s copyright,” said Falzone, who is on the team representing Shloss. “Because, among other things, it is protected by fair use.”

“Fair use” is a term that entered the books with the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowing users to legally use copyrighted material under special circumstances. Often, fair use is cited in scholarship or review, though one common application today is when Web sites post copies of song lyrics for listeners.

The Fair Use Project and Stanford’s Cyberlaw Clinic are part of the nascent Center for Internet and Society at the Law School, started in 2000 and later bolstered by $2 million of financial support from Google.

“It represents clients in non-commercial and commercial cases that present compelling issues of fair use and associated principles,” a posting on the Project’s Web site says.

Conflicts like Shloss’ have become more prevalent in recent years, as the Internet has evolved and people have used it to host increasingly diverse content.

With the proliferation of multimedia-sharing sites like youtube.com, metacafe.com and myspace.com, court decisions regarding fair use have taken on an added importance.

“When you think about the tools available today to manipulate and transform the media and culture around you, it’s astounding,” Falzone said. “You can do things today with music and video — put them all together, publish them on the net — that no one but a TV network could do five years ago. With the explosion of user-generated content sites, people have a lust for self expression.”

But what comes next? That question stands before the Fair Use Project and society at-large today. While many may not use these new technologies to infringe copyright-protected content, countless others will.

The Fair Use Project represents clients pro bono, whose cases “will have an impact on the law, and specifically cases that will help clarify, define and expand fair use rights,” according to Falzone.

The Fair Use Project also represents artists and musicians who face legal troubles regarding copyright law.

Documentary filmmakers, for example, often rely heavily on fair use content.

Lawyers at the Fair Use Project provide “legal representation to documentary filmmakers who comply with recognized fair use principles, providing assistance during production, as well as a commitment to provide defend them should litigation arise,” according to their website.

Falzone pointed to the case of a filmmaker working on a short video he posted on youtube.com, in which he used copyrighted music. After the filmmaker received a cease-and-desist order from Universal Music, he backed down. But then Fair Use Project lawyers “told Universal ‘No, this is fair use,’ and sure enough, Universal went away,” said Falzone.

Thus, Falzone says one of the first steps is for content owners to know that there is a resource for them.

On a broader scale, though, Falzone sees the work he does as important in other ways.

“For me, what’s at stake is whether you will be merely a consumer of the media culture around you, or will you have the right and the ability to speak back and be part of a dialogue,” Falzone said.