Lawrence Lessig Wins Fair Use Case

just_another_sean writes "An Australian record label that threatened to sue one of the world's most famous copyright attorneys for infringement has reached a settlement with him. The settlement includes an admission that Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor, had the right to use a song by the band Phoenix. From the article: 'In a statement, Liberation Music admitted Lessig's use of the song was protected by fair use — a legal doctrine that allows copyrighted material to be used for education, satire and a few other exceptions. Liberation Music says it will also pay Lessig for the harm it caused. The amount is confidential under the terms of the agreement, but it will be dedicated to supporting work by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil rights group, to work on causes that were important to Lessig's friend Aaron Swartz, a technologist and activist who committed suicide last year.'"

Comments

Re:Aaron Swartz was an asshole, good riddance.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, just someone who recognises the difference between a sane left-winger and an insane one. Aaron Scwartz was an insane one.

It explains his suicide far better - when a massively inflated ego who has vomited on the internet daily protected by a self-created echo chamber finally meets some opposition he cannot dismiss derisively, then it's very understandable that his world collapses.

I recommend anyone else reading his blogposts as well. It will give a quite different picture than the sympathetic one in the media.