Fair use
On copyright, Aufderheide examines ways in which intellectual property law impacts the production, circulation, and consumption of media. She has argued, often in conjunction with Peter Jaszi, that the U.S. copyright doctrine of fair use is more available than many communities of practice currently make of it. Fair use is linked, in this argument, with free expression. Extensive research with a variety of communities of practice have demonstrated that link, as was documented in "Reclaiming Fair Use". With Jaszi, she has coordinated successful efforts in several communities of practice to articulate the best practices of a community on fair use. "Reclaiming Fair Use" documented that when communities have employed these codes of best practices and, through them, learned about the availability of fair use, their ability to make work more efficiently and effectively has increased, expanding free expression. These results were not anticipated by critics of the position that Aufderheide and Jaszi have taken. Lawrence Lessig for instance has argued that fair use is too undependable to be a reliable balancing feature of copyright, and that encouraging people to use it distracts from the mission to reform copyright law. Jennifer Rothman has argued that codes of best practices could constrain employment of fair use.