Recovering Fair Use

Figuring on fair use

Beyond Fair Use

For centuries, the fair use doctrine has been the main—if not the exclusive—bastion of user rights. Originating in the English courts of equity, the doctrine permitted users, under appropriate circumstances, to employ copyrighted content without the rightsholder’s consent. In the current digital media environment, however, the uncertainty that shrouds fair use and the proliferation of technolog...

Information Technology and Fair Use

Intellectual pursuit and the recognition of ideas is a central concept. Copyrights protect the rights of intellectual creators while balancing those rights with the needs for access. As technologies have expanded, and production has become more sophisticated, the legal regulations surrounding their use have become more complex. With the advent of the interactive web 2.0 and increased resource s...

Approximating Fair Use in LicenseScript

Current rights management systems are not able to enforce copyright laws because of both legal and technological reasons. The contract rights granted by a copyright owner are often overridden by the users’ statutory rights that are granted by the laws. In particular, Fair Use allows for “unauthorized but not illegal” use of content. Two technological reasons why fair use cannot be upheld: (1) t...

Fair Use and Innovation Policy

New technologies such as the VCR and Google Book Search can change the way copyrighted works are used, thereby making their innovators rich. Copyright owners are aware of these riches and often strategically sue the technology companies with the aim of gaining a share of the money. This dynamic—an innovator investing to create a new technology and a creator of a copyrighted work then suing for ...