Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control
Posted January 21st, 2006 by Michael Roy, Middlebury College
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Our new friends at the Institute for the Future of the Book gave me a nifty report called "Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control" that is well worth reading. The writing is crisp and the ideas are in this age of intellectual property retrenchment refreshingly provocative.
Published by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, and written by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, the report summarizes the results of research done by the Center that looked at a range of artists and academics who ran into trouble with fair use in the early part of the 21st century, either by being the recipients of DMCA cease and desist orders, or who were sued for copyright infringement. While the report paints a fairly dreary picture of our present culture (described derisively as the culture of clearance), the authors do make some concrete suggestions that could help turn the tide in favor of fair use.
Most interesting to me (as someone who is tangentially involved in issuing cease and desist orders on my campus network) was the idea that people who receive cease and desist orders can in fact contest those orders, and that we who issue these orders on behalf of agrieved copyright-holders could and should provide our users with explicit instuctions on how to contest a cease and desist order if they feel their use of someone else's copyrighted material falls under the umbrella of fair use.
Published by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, and written by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, the report summarizes the results of research done by the Center that looked at a range of artists and academics who ran into trouble with fair use in the early part of the 21st century, either by being the recipients of DMCA cease and desist orders, or who were sued for copyright infringement. While the report paints a fairly dreary picture of our present culture (described derisively as the culture of clearance), the authors do make some concrete suggestions that could help turn the tide in favor of fair use.
Most interesting to me (as someone who is tangentially involved in issuing cease and desist orders on my campus network) was the idea that people who receive cease and desist orders can in fact contest those orders, and that we who issue these orders on behalf of agrieved copyright-holders could and should provide our users with explicit instuctions on how to contest a cease and desist order if they feel their use of someone else's copyrighted material falls under the umbrella of fair use.
How to cite this work
Michael Roy. "Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control." Academic Commons Issue Name (Spring 2008): 21 November 2008. <http://www.academiccommons.org/>.Bookmark/Search this post with:
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