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:Rights, fair use and what the consumer wants

[flossie]

Surely not! Next you'll be telling me it wasn't an American who invented the computer. Or the hovercraft. Or the steam engine. Or calculus. Or ...

Re:I don't care

[mpe]

It seems that the framers of the constitution didn't foresee this loophole that copyright seems to have created. They were worried about people in government abusing power.. not corporations seeking profit.

All this would appear to stem from the granting of "personhood" to corporations in the 19th century. This isn't so much a loophole in copyright as it is inability to predict human stupidity.
Once this happened it was only a matter of time before corporations became patricians and ordinary people became plebeans.

And I disagree with that

[HanzoSan]

I think when i pay for something, I should be able to use it any way i want, if i change it into a diffrent form of information like 1s and 0s, its not longer the original product and therefore i can distribute it.

If you have a program, and you have a compiled binary and its source code. But people say "Look but dont touch" and its that shared source bullshit, "Touch but dont share"

Well then, wheres your freedom?

That's fine, that's covered by regular "home use", and it's something you've paid for. What you can't do is charge for admission. That's "commercial use". You also can't redistribute the music for other people to make their own copies of it - that's redistribution.

I'm not talking about the law here, I'm talking about right and wrong. Its right for us the consumer to completely control distribution.
Its also fair for the artist to get 100 percent all the profits. Meaning i dont think its right for a consumer to sell something created by artist X. I do think its right for a consumer to share, copy, or do whatever they want, because no money is changing hands here, the people you are sharing it with obviously wouldnt buy it in the first place, anyone who is going to buy it are the ones sharing it usually, those are the fans.

Believe it or not, clubs and raves have to pay pretty hefty prices to do what they do. They do not just go to Rhino Records and pick out some tunes. They pay thousands of dollars per year to ASCAP and BMI, organisations who (purportedly) then compensate the copyright holders. So your analogy doesn't hold up. Its morally right to share. Greed is morally wrong, But this fucking country's system be it law, or the capitalist system, rewards GREED!

I'm sorry, but I can not support a law which I do not agree with morally, its like supporting capital punishment.

Copyright is like Capital Punishment because alot of people are dying over medical patents, cant afford medicines which could be given to them for free over some patent bullshit.

Patents only help the rich CEOs at these big music companies. Musicians arent all rich, most are poor as hell, Musicians make pennies per CD, this just isnt working, Musicians and Consumers arent satisfied, People are dying in other countries, and the only ones who like patents and copyright are the people who own them and are making a fortune from them.

Programmers hate copyright and patents thus we have open source movement.

Consumers hate copyright and patents thus we have napster, gnutella, etc.

Radio broadcasters on the net hate copyright and patents, thats why they protest the laws wit it.

So I'm going to assume, about 80 percent of the population is against copyright and patents, for some reason or another, but they are too confused to do anything about it, or they cant do anything about it.

IN a democracy, you do what the people want, not what the corperations want, not what the politicians want. IF we were a democracy, people would vote, and the patent system would be gone. Because theres more of us who dont have patents and copyrights, or who dont benifit from them, than the few guys in suits who do. Who do you think would win in a vote? And if you make it a world vote, it would be silly to see 6 billion people all vote against copyright and maybe a million people support it, not even 1% of the world population.

This is about whats right and whats wrong, its about what the people want, the consumers, the programmers, the artists and musicians want, not about how to give corperations and rich guys what they want.