Coding Fair Use

An Anonymous Coward writes: "A report from CFP2002 on the tension between making fair use clear and retaining ambiguity to facilitate the application of fair use to future technologies." Lots of good papers available from the Fair Use By Design workshop and the conference in general.

Comments

Do The Math

[stoolpigeon]

As the article states, any system to try and restrict access to content will be broken.

You can keep passing laws but you cannot enforce the laws already in place as there are just way too many laws and even more people to break them.

If you can't enforce all the laws for all the people, then of necessity you must choose which laws you will enforce, when you will enforce them and who you will enforce them on.

In the world we live in right now- resources are not going to be primarily aimed at keeping content locked up. There are larger, more pressing issues. (like staying alive)

Content creators need to take some of that creativity and look for new ways to make it self sustaining.

It makes me think of self defense moves where you use the weight and inertia of a large aggressor against them. Content creators need to stop fighting what is an unstoppable force and find a way to ride that force to succes.

Easy to say, hard to do? Sure but what is worthwhile that isn't difficult?

.

RIAA in a nut shell..

[Em Emalb]

this quote from the article sums up for me everything wrong with the **IA.

"The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view -- a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely."

This is what is wrong with the US today.

Everything as pay per view

[Alien54]

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is arguing for ambiguity. He thinks copyright law needs to leave room for innovation as new technologies come along.

An audience member asks if this ambiguity is what lets lawyers threaten people with lawsuits for non-infringing uses, intimidating them into taking down Web content that should remain public. We need a floor, von Lohmann says, not a ceiling on permissible activities.

The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view, a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely.

This impulse has been around for a while under different names.

It used to be known as "Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg"

Fair use need to be somehow writtin into law, but I do not see a quick way around someone who decides to sell something only on a pay perview basis. With a wide enough reach (such as the Internet) you can generally get enough people to support the market, even if they are only the tiniest fraction of the population.

Example: Spam

"ownership" of content?

[happyclam]

The piece makes mention of the entertainment industry trying to move everything to pay-per-view. Clearly, that would be ideal for them. But lost in that worldview is the idea that once I "buy" a bit of content, it's "mine" to do with as I choose, short of republication.

Example: I buy a book. I can read it zero or more times. I can pull pages out and rearrange them or stick them on my wall. I can make a photocopy of portions and keep those pages in my car. I can give the book to a friend, but I'm not allowed to copy the book and give it to a friend.

This right is, of course, what the fair use clauses are meant to protect.

Copyright law is really (or should be!) about publishing--no one but the owner of the "rights" to a piece of work has the legal right to publish it.

Perhaps it's all semantics (but isn't that what the law and politics are about?), but it seems to me we should stop talking about copy rights and start talking about publish rights. Put the battle into the right geography: It's not about making copies but about distributing copies.

If we managed to change the language to a language of publish rights instead of copy rights, then perhaps terms like "piracy" would simply vanish. And, it seems to me, coding protections for publish rights while also coding protections for fair use rights would be less ambiguous and more achievable.

My vote for Fair Use.

[volsung]

I think digitalconsumer.org has the ideal set of "fair use" requirements:

The Consumer Technology Bill of Rights

1. Users have the right to "time-shift" content that they have legally acquired.

   This gives you the right to record video or audio for later viewing or listening. For example, you can use a VCR to record a TV show and play it back later.

2. Users have the right to "space-shift" content that they have legally acquired.

   This gives you the right to use your content in different places (as long as each use is personal and non-commercial). For example, you can copy a CD to a portable music player so that you can listen to the songs while you're jogging.

3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.

   This gives you the right to make archival copies to be used in the event that your original copies are destroyed.

4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.

   This gives you the right to listen to music on your Rio, to watch TV on your iMac, and to view DVDs on your Linux computer.

5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.

   This gives you the right to modify content in order to make it more usable. For example, a blind person can modify an electronic book so that the content can be read out loud.

6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

   This last right guarantees your ability to exercise your other rights. Certain recent copyright laws have paradoxical loopholes that claim to grant certain rights but then criminalize all technologies that could allow you to exercise those rights. In contrast, this Bill of Rights states that no technological barriers can deprive you of your other fair use rights.

All my commercial software is licensed

[JordanH]

I'm not sure how Fair Use would apply to commercial software I use. All that I use, AFAIK, is both copyrighted and licensed.

From what I understand, the book publishers tried to license all their works around the turn of the century and this resulted in the "First Sale" doctrine we have now when the Courts struck that down.

I'd be in favor of "First Sale" recognition for software, but until we have that Fair Use doesn't have much affect on me. Even if Fair Use would allow me to do something with software that I don't already do, the license would probably forbid it.

Is there any chance that the Courts will just strike down the licenses for software? Are we to act like these software are only protected by copyright, including Fair Use provisions, to get this brought before a court?