Media giants want to end US fair use doctrine

ism tech

Posted Thursday, 10 April 2008, 02:44 HST @447

Google’s senior copyright counsel, William Patry, posted a long article about a whisper campaign that media giants are conducting. Patry’s article was also discussed on BoingBoing. and ArsTechnica.

The whispered rumor is that US Fair Use doctrine is so broad that it violates international law - specifically, the Berne Convention on copyright. If enough national governments agree with this interpretation, the US government might be required to replace the Fair Use doctrine with something far more restrictive and expensive.

Patry, who helped negotiate modifications to the Berne Convention when he worked for the U.S. Copyright Office, offers a lengthy and detailed response to the whisper campaign that can be summarized in one word: NO.

Why should students care?

A revocation of fair use might also destroy the online and retail used textbook markets. This would limit the opportunities to find used textbooks, and force more students to buy new textbooks for their courses.

Fair use is the doctrine that lets reviewers quote from the published works, and helps professors distribute sections of published works to their students. Without fair use, students and universities will have to pay more for the content they currently use.

The publishing and media conglomerates would love to kill fair use once and for all in the USA, to help the industries’ flagging revenues.

it’s unlikely that the US courts would allow the Fair Use doctrine to be overturned, even if the US Congress does manage to overturn it through new legislation.

The European Union is about to vote down a publisher-friendly three strikes proposal that would have let ISPs exile users from the Internet for repeated copyright violations, including P2P file-sharing. See this Electronic Frontier Foundation post for more details.

For more information see my posts about copyright, including the following articles from billso.com: