No, because reading the book aloud for free on YouTube would obviate the need for people to purchase the book (or otherwise acquire a purchased copy of it). In

No, because reading the book aloud for free on YouTube would obviate the need for people to purchase the book (or otherwise acquire a purchased copy of it). In this case, learning how to play a song on guitar doesn't obviate the need to hear the original artist's recording of it. It's an argument over the doctrine of fair use, which has four parts: 1. What's the purpose of the use? Is it for educational purposes, or commercial purposes? (These aren't mutually exclusive, which is a confounder) 2. What's claimed to be copyrighted/creative in the original work? Is the creativity in question merely the phrasing of facts, or are there aspects of the original author's own creativity (for music, this one is probably irrelevant; it's obviously a largely creative endeavor, though I guess there probably exist certain hypothetical pieces of music for which it's harder to say) 3. How much of the work has been used? This is tricky; he probably teaches how to play entire songs, but the guitar part of any given song is a small piece of the overall work (and he probably uses very little, if any, of the copyrighted recording) 4. What's the impact on the value of the original work? In this case it's clear that there is essentially no negative impact – if anything, if you're learning to play a song, you're more likely to purchase or otherwise consume the original recording. This is also usually the most important factor in deciding fair use (from what I understand; I am not a legal professional, I just remember this from a paper I wrote in college for some course or other). (edit: formatting)