Comment by greensoap

That is only relevant to whether it is fair use not to whether the copying is an infringement. Fair use is what is called an affirmative defense -- it means that yes what I did was technically a violation but is forgiven. So on technicalities the copying is an infringement but that infringement is "okay" because there is a fair use. A different scenario is if the copyright owner gives you a license to copy the work (like open source licenses). In that scenario the copying was not an infringement because a license exists.