Copy Right and Fair Use
The International Intellectual Property Alliance unveiled the new report today in association with the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus at an event in Washington, DC. The report doesn't even try to quantify losses to piracy anymore—last year, an official US government report concluded that such estimates were all deeply unreliable. Instead, it simply asserts without evidence that "piracy inhibits… growth in the US and around the world."
"Inhibits growth" doesn't quite equal "causes staggering job losses," the traditional anti-piracy rallying cry. Indeed, copyright industries are being "hard hit" by piracy in the way that plenty of other US industries are desperate to get "hit." (In this sense, the report is bit like the MPAA's routine announcements of record-setting box office revenues even as the movie studios conjure visions of apocalypse.)
During the recession of the last few years, the report shows that copyright-based businesses have far exceeded the US economy as a whole.
Guns and Roses Copyright Scandal
One of the most bizarre cases yet with the FBI arresting a blogger for blogger for breaking copyright laws by posting copies of songs from the soon-to-be-released Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy. Kevin Cogill, under the online Alias "Skwerl", has been charged with copyright violations after he uploaded nine of the album's songs for downloading purposes. Cogill could spend up to five years in jail.
This is a case of complete overkill with other bloggers saying it's time to show the guy support. AS Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk says, Cogill's fate now rests in the band's hands. The Gunners have put out a statement sitting on the fence.
"Presently, though we don't support this guy's actions at that level, our interest is in the original source. We can't comment publicly at this time as the investigation is ongoing."
Just another sign of how out of touch with the music industry is with the real world.
Fair Use
Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist’s work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work
http://www.newswise.com/articles/economists-say-copyright-and-patent-laws-are-killing-innovation-hurting-economy
Fair Use
Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses
Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses:
Criticism and comment -- for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.
News reporting -- for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report.
Research and scholarship -- for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
Nonprofit educational uses -- for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use.
Parody -- that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way.
Copyright
Fox News Sued For Copyright Infringement; Complaint Mocks Murdoch's Comments On 'Stealing' Content
from the gonna-come-back-to-bite-you dept
It's always funny how those organizations that seem to be against the concept of fair use have it come back to bite them. You may remember, a few months ago, as part of his campaign against "aggregator" sites that "steal" from him, Murdoch commented that fair use would likely be barred in the courts if properly challenged, suggesting he didn't believe in fair use at all. We already noted the irony of this, given how many different aggregator sites Murdoch owns as part of News Corp. Now those statements may also be causing a bit of a problem in court as well.
A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that a former advisor to Michael Jackson who apparently holds the copyright on certain interview footage is suing Fox News over airing parts of the interview recently. In response Fox has claimed "fair use," over the use in a news program -- and I actually agree that it seems like a case of fair use -- but the copyright holder actually uses Murdoch's words against him:
The filing chides Murdoch, who has threatened to sue the British Broadcasting Corp. and others for copyright infringement because he claims they are stealing content from his company's newspapers.
"Fox sanctimoniously operates unencumbered by the very copyright restrictions it seeks to impose on its competitors," the lawsuit states.
Once again, it appears that a copyright holder doesn't believe in fair use for others, but only for themselves.
Fair use on the Internet
A US court case in 2003, Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, provides and develops the relationship between thumbnails, inline linking and fair use. In the lower District Court case on a motion for summary judgment, Arriba Soft was found to have violated copyright without a fair use defense in the use of thumbnail pictures and inline linking from Kelly's website in Arriba's image search engine. That decision was appealed and contested by Internet rights activists such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argued that it is clearly covered under fair use.
On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in favour of the defendant. In reaching its decision, the court utilized the above-mentioned four-factor analysis. Firstly, it found the purpose of creating the thumbnail images as previews to be sufficiently transformative, noting that they were not meant to be viewed at high resolution like the original artwork was. Secondly, the fact that the photographs had already been published diminished the significance of their nature as creative works. Thirdly, although normally making a "full" replication of a copyrighted work may appear to violate copyright, here it was found to be reasonable and necessary in light of the intended use. Lastly, the court found that the market for the original photographs would not be substantially diminished by the creation of the thumbnails. To the contrary, the thumbnail searches could increase exposure of the originals. In looking at all these factors as a whole, the court found that the thumbnails were fair use and remanded the case to the lower court for trial after issuing a revised opinion on July 7, 2003. The remaining issues were resolved with a default judgment after Arriba Soft had experienced significant financial problems and failed to reach a negotiated settlement.
In August 2008 US District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, California ruled that copyright holders cannot order a deletion of an online file without determining whether that posting reflected "fair use" of the copyrighted material. The case involved Stephanie Lenz, a writer and editor from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, who made a home video of her thirteen-month-old son dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy and posted the video on YouTube. Four months later, Universal Music, the owner of the copyright to the song, ordered YouTube to remove the video enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz notified YouTube immediately that her video was within the scope of fair use, and demanded that it be restored. YouTube complied after six weeks, not two weeks as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz then sued Universal Music in California for her legal costs, claiming the music company had acted in bad faith by ordering removal of a video that represented fair-use of the song.[27]
Reference: One of the most bizarre cases yet with the FBI arresting a blogger for blogger for breaking copyright laws by posting copies of songs from the soon-to-be-released Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy. Kevin Cogill, under the online Alias "Skwerl", has been charged with copyright violations after he uploaded nine of the album's songs for downloading purposes. Cogill could spend up to five years in jail.
This is a case of complete overkill with other bloggers saying it's time to show the guy support. AS Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk says, Cogill's fate now rests in the band's hands. The Gunners have put out a statement sitting on the fence.
"Presently, though we don't support this guy's actions at that level, our interest is in the original source. We can't comment publicly at this time as the investigation is ongoing."
Just another sign of how out of touch with the music industry is with the real world.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Reference: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100108/1446417680.shtml
Reference: Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses
Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses:
Criticism and comment -- for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.
News reporting -- for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report.
Research and scholarship -- for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
Nonprofit educational uses -- for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use.
Parody -- that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way.
Reference: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/
Reference: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/piracy-problems-us-copyright-industries-show-terrific-health.ars
