Comments on: Fair Use Rights

By: Copywrong at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Copywrong at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:44:50 +0000

[...] response to: Fair Use Rights by David [...]

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:46:44 +0000

Copyright is a taking of a public benefit for a private entity. This was put into law in order to increase the public benefit. The idea was that by taking from the public to provide the creator a limited term right to their work (through government intervention) would encourage individuals to invest their time in creating works that would benefit society. So the debate is properly about how great the taking from the public should be. It seems to me the current situation is completely corrupt. Many of the actions are taking public benefit to provide to the private entity where no possible public benefit exists. Extending copyright periods of long ago created works, where obviously the public is harmed purely for private benefit. No possible argument can be made that their is a payoff to the public for this taking. If you wanted to take such an action and made it only for new work then their could be an argument that now a creator knows they have 100 years of government provided rights and therefore investing more time and effort in their work creates new and better work. I don't believe this argument but at least it is possible. The current actions though are mainly about large companies using government to take from the public to provide themselves private benefit with no corresponding public benefit. Lawrence Lessig is the person who has the best insight in this area, in my opinion: The Value of the Public Domain Related: What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests - Innovation and Creative Commons -

By: Bert Ramsay

Bert Ramsay — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:49:59 +0000

I have read over this view several times and am still not sure what he is proposing. Can someone give me an example of how this would work under the two ways of defining fair use – and this would benefit the consumer and copyright holder?
What is the problem with publishers wanting to be compensated for their published works? Is downloading music for personal use with out payment justified uner either of the fair use guidelines?
Who pays for this fair use of creative products? The creator?

By: Peter Suber

Peter Suber — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:12:15 +0000

Via email

I don’t think the displacement was inadvertent. Publishers are consciously trying to minimize fair use, just as they are trying to maximize the term of copyright.

I support what Chik is doing. However, I think that the distinction between fair-use as a defense and fair-use as a right can be overstated – i.e. that in an important sense, it’s already a right. (Take self-defense as an analogy; strictly speaking it’s a defense; but for that very reason it functions as a right.) But that’s a minor quibble; I still support what he’s doing. If his thesis, and yours, is that fair use becomes more important as publishers tilt the traditional copyright balance toward maximalism, then I support that too.

But I’d go further, as you might guess. We need much more than strengthened fair use; we need to shorten the term of copyright, restore the first-sale doctrine, protect the public domain, punish copyfraud (the false claim of copyright) – and work for open access to royalty-free literature such as peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.

Best
Peter