Fair Use is Not a Constitutional Right

jmichaelg writes: "Ed Stroligo at overclockers.com has written an article on the fair-use provision of the 1976 copyright law. He goes into some depth on the difference between a constitutional right vs. a legal right as well as covers the Betamax, Napster and Rio cases. It's a well thought out article and definitely worth the read."

Comments

Re:Dear God almighty...

[leereyno]

Its great to hear that someone else out there knows what you know.

I can't tell you how sick I get of having to explain to people that our rights are not an indulgence on the part of the government. That the government is our servant and not our master. Unfortunately there are a whole big slew of loonies,who ironically call themselves "liberals", who are hard at work trying to instill the notion that we are at the mercy of the government and that it decides what is right and what privileges we are allowed to have. The reason they do this is because they are intent upon controlling the government. Take your average left winger and ask them if they would support a government run by republicans or libertarians. He or she would naturally be very much opposed to that. Yet at the same time this same "liberal" is generally very much in favor of things like socialism. Basically anytime a "liberal" is espousing the role of government as the solution to a particular problem, they are not thinking of a government of the people, by the people, for the people. They are instead imagining a government that is defined and controlled by left-wing ideology. We defeated a nation controlled by left-wing ideology in WWII and then spent the next 40 years in a cold war with another. I fail to see how the importation and implementation of such philosophies in this country are a good idea. That being said I must also say that I am not a right-winger either. I'm a libertarian for the most part, highly distrustful of power and authority of any kind. Authority that is not accountable and vulnerable to the will of the people is tyrrany.

Anyway I really liked your post :)

Lee