Picked this one up on Ars Technica: “Copyright Reform Act tries fixing fair use with seven words.” Which is intriguing, considering the oceans of verbiage expended on the subject in the last few years.
The CRA [Copyright Reform Act] is a new project from Public Knowledge, with much of the heavy lifting being done by the Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford and the Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC-Berkeley. While Berkeley’s noted copyright scholar Pam Samuelson works up a new “model statute” for copyright law in the digital age, Public Knowledge hopes to make smaller interim fixes to copyright law that won’t require the same dramatic reworking.
One can access theCopyright Reform Act document at Public Knowledge.org.
Anyone care to comment here on whether or not these particular seven words would do the trick?
March 10th, 2010 09:27
Looks like 8 words to me. Maybe the “and” doesn’t count? :^)
Anyway, two thoughts. I agree with that analysis that “personal, non-commercial” could be tricky to define. I could borrow a CD (or 10) from the library, rip it into iTunes, return the CD to the library – and then listen to the music every single day for a year because it’s my favorite. It’s personal and non-commercial, but it also deprives the copyright owner of some revenue because I didn’t just buy my own copy.
Second, even the “for educational purposes” wording of the original law is not straightforward. I used to work at a university office where we helped faculty develop software for use in their courses (mid to late 1990s). One particular course focused on linguistic discrimination and needed a lot of audio and video clips – we had to get permission for each and every clip. The rationale is that it was a planned use and would be used repeatedly (rather than something like “oh this show would be perfect for my class tomorrow, I will tape it”). It was a major hassle, and most of the film companies did not allow us to use their material (wouldn’t even license for a fee). Maybe the lawyers at our U were just particularly anal, but that was the prevailing practice in the educational technology community at the time.
Clarity on these points would be well received by all end users!