Thursday, February 26, 2015
"Fair Use Week": Congress should protect defendants who show "good faith"
Internet users are celebrating Fair Use Week as this
very long winter peaks, link here. It’s important to remember that speakers
overseas often do not have the protection of a “Fair Use” doctrine.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an article by Mitch
Stoltz, writes that Congress should strengthen Fair Use with a “Do No Harm”
policy. One of the most important ideas
is to remove statutory penalties for infringement when the alleged misuse did
not actually result in financial loss for the owner, and also when the
defendant had acted in “good faith”. Content
creators sometimes mix other artists’ work in ways that courts have never
considered, a move that EFF calls “financial Russian Roulette”, almost out of a
famous scene in the movie “The Deer Hunter”.
Composers tell me that all music composition involves some copying. Remember the dreaded phrase, “I’ve heard that
before.” When I go to the movies, I
often wonder that – what obscure classical work did the background music come
from, not credited.
EFF also suggests that there should exist an exception
to DMCA circumvention procedures (Section 1201) when the intention is fair use.
One good question would be making copies at home (with
cell phone cameras) of screenshots from movies for television shows when the
use is completely private, and never posted online. The possibility could exist that in the
future technology could scan cloud backups for such “infringements”.
Man major motion pictures today offer a statement at
the end, of the number of jobs supported by making the film, as a further psychological
deterrent to piracy.
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