Author: john

Even with a good feed reader, it can be hard to keep up with the news, and even harder to blog. Something worth mentioning that mostly happened “while I was away” was a brief online debate about the scope of copyright and fair use.

• Fair use is not a consumer right | Perspectives | CNET News.com
  • The director of the Copyright Alliance argues against the notion of fair use as a “right.” I’d argue that legally, he’s correct, but in the minds of the public it’s a really tough sell. Evidenced by a number of posts and comments on the subject.
• Free Speech Sometimes Trumps Copyright | Wired
  • On the other side of the debate, a director for the EFF argues, along with Lessig, that a victory in Golan v. Gonzales is a big deal as the first recognition of a change in copyright’s “traditional contours.”
• Copyright is always Government Intervention | The Patry Copyright Blog
  • Google’s copyright council, William Patry, rightly points out counter to the Copyright Alliance’s demands of respect for strong copyright. He notes that copyright’s very existence should be thought of as an act of government intervention:

One thing should be beyond dispute, and that is copyright is always an act of government intervention. Without Congress enacting title 17, there would be no (federal) law at all, as the Supreme Court held in its very first (1834) opinion in a copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters. Copyright in the U.S. is, therefore, in its very essence, an act by Congress interfering with an inherent lack of rights: every grant of rights represents government intervention. I support such intervention when it is responsible, as it has been for much of our countries’ history, at least until 1998, when in my opinion things ran permanently off the rails with term extension and the sui generis DMCA provisions of chapter 12.

• Economic Value
  • A report on the economic value of fair use (story) has drawn arguments from more than one fan of liberal copyright protection. Google realizes that much of their business relies on fair use, while Carr contends that the data might be misleading. Considering it was a consulting firm that collected the data and prepared the report, it’s probably best to take the results with a grain of salt–but the debate is nonetheless interesting.