What the Copyright Office thinks about Fair Use
This piece contains some valuable insights into how the copyright office construes fair use [narrowly], and equally valuable insights on how the office’s application of the “law on the books” differs from the “law in action.”
The Court’s ruling in the Sony case was limited to “free, over-the-air television for time-shifting,” she tells Ars. “It is not space-shifting; it’s not anything beyond that. It’s not off cable, it’s not off video-on-demand, and yet if you talk to most consumers, they think that anything they do in the home that comes through their television set is fair use.”
This is certainly because of the great social weight we place on the Supreme Court, and speaks well to their role in simplifying ambiguities. While the Court’s ruling may be limited in the courtroom, in the ‘court of public opinion’ rulings such as Sony play an crucial role in setting social norms which in time may or may not agree with prevailing legal opinion.
Further on, an EFF lawyer gives an agreeing analysis, albeit from a different angle, which serves his chosen profession well:
This ambiguity [in fair use] is “not a bug, it’s a feature,” he says. “Marybeth Peters is correct that the Sony Betamax case does not clearly establish that space-shifting is a fair use. Neither does it say that it’s not a fair use. That’s a question for a court to answer when the case comes up.”
Unfortunately, most of us don’t know the law well enough or cannot afford to hire an attorney to fight a copyright case. Who would want to bother fighting an owner for a quickly posted YouTube video, anyway?