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Study: Fair Use Drives Large Part of US Economy
angry tapir writes "Industries that rely on fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright law have weathered the recent slow economy better than other businesses, according to a new study released by a tech trade group. The fair use industries, including consumer device makers, software developers, search engines and news organizations, had US$4.5 trillion in revenue in 2009, up from $3.4 trillion in 2002, according to the study, commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry (CCIA) Association. Fair use businesses make up about 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the study. The study shows the importance of fair use exceptions in copyright law, said Ed Black, CCIA's president and CEO."
I'm a librarian. My entire profession would not exist if not for similar provisions.
I have not RTFA to know whether it is adopting a strict definition or not, but non-copyrightable facts are not examples of fair use - they are examples of something which falls outside the copyright regime.
In this case I would suggest you at least throw a cursory glance at the actual report (PDF warning) because from page 15 they list some examples of how "Other Information Services industry (NAICS 519)" benefit of Fair Use and Other Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright Law (which is what this report is targeting). They list several statutory provisions like: 102(a) non-copyrightability of facts, 102(b) idea/expression dichotomy, 107 fair use: criticism; comment; news reporting; browser, cache copies; teaching; scholarship; research, 108 library uses, 109 first-sale doctrine, 512 ISP safe harbors, 302-304 copyright term and 105 no copyright in U.S. Government works. Granted, those are very brief descriptions of what are undoubtedly lengthy legalese but I hope that someone makes it clear that this report is not referring strictly to just fair use in the sense that you are speaking of. It's talking about fair use related industries that rely on provisions like the above.
I think a better description would be "All Limiting Exceptions to Copyright" than "Fair Use" for this particular study. Side note: I think you can see how Google and others benefit from the protection under cache copies to a very large degree.
My work here is dung.
Ah, but if we had extremely restrictive copyright rules in place benefiting big companies (where "big companies" = RIAA/MPAA and not bigger, low-copyright companies like clothing designers), that $4.5 trillion would have been $89.6 quadrillion.*
* Study funded by the RIAA/MPAA. Figured based on completely unbiased** mathematical modeling.***
** Where "unbiased" means "completely biased."
*** "mathematical modeling" means "we pulled some big numbers out of our posteriors."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Appreciated - thank you.
Anytime! On a side note, I would also like to relay the comic irony I discovered in trying to copy/paste those snippets to you from the PDF report (Adobe's Reader). When I try to copy/paste "Other Information Services industry (NAICS 519)" instead I get:
I assume this is to prevent people from easily reusing or finding via search engine this free report extolling the benefits of limiting copyright. I wish I could have shared more with you but I had to retype everything by hand.
My work here is dung.