COPYCENSE

“Whether we’re aware of it or not, the doctrine of fair use built into copyright law is one of the most important protections available to scholars, librarians, and students. Every time you quote from someone else’s work, every time you photocopy an article for a student, every time you read a passage aloud to your class, you are technically in violation of copyright.

“The reason that an army of publishers and FBI agents aren’t smashing down your office door is that U.S. jurisprudence has long understood that a totalizing approach to copyright would be disastrous. Fair use is the only way we as individuals can together do what is fundamentally a collective endeavor, scholarship, in an information ecology that otherwise lives and dies by the intensely individualizing force of the marketplace.

“But fair use has been carrying a heavy load lately, and it’s starting to show its limitations.”

Tarleton Gillespie. Everything to Everyone. Inside Higher Ed. Jan. 27, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.