[free-sklyarov] Fair Use in the Electronic Age

[karee]

Wednesday, July 25, 2001, 8:58:26 PM, you wrote:


AM> http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/fairuse.html

AM> The following was said by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor 
AM> in the case 'Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural 
AM> Telephone Service Co':

AM> "The primary objective of copyright is not to reward 
AM> the labor of authors, but to promote the Progress of 
AM> Science and useful Arts. To this end, copyright 
AM> assures authors the right to their original 
AM> expression, but encourages others to build freely upon 
AM> the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This 
AM> result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the 
AM> means by which copyright advances the progress of 
AM> science and art". 

AM> The Copyright Law states that:

AM> Without infringing copyright, the public has a right 
AM> to expect: 

AM> ---to read, listen to, or view publicly marketed 
AM> copyrighted material privately, on site or remotely; 

AM> ---to browse through publicly marketed copyrighted 
AM> material; 

AM> ---to experiment with variations of copyrighted 
AM> material for fair use purposes, while preserving the 
AM> integrity of the original; 

AM> ---to make or have made for them a first generation 
AM> copy for personal use of an article or other small 
AM> part of a publicly marketed copyrighted work or a work 
AM> in a library's collection for such purpose as study, 
AM> scholarship, or research; and 

AM> ---to make transitory copies if ephemeral or 
AM> incidental to a lawful use and if retained only 
AM> temporarily. 





AM> Best regards,
AM> Alexander Moskalyuk
AM> http://www.moskalyuk.com/
AM> ICQ 44065387

AM> _______________________________________________
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AM> free-sklyarov at zork.net
AM> http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov

Good case,  but not terribly relevant for this situation. This isn't a
copyright infringement case. Thats the bitch of the DMCA.  It made it
that much easier for the Copyright holders, but not making them prove
that which had to be proven in Feist.  In that case, copying the
information straight out of your competitor is fine, so long as you
dont' steal the -exact- way he does it.  Put to death the old 'sweat
of the brow ' argument.

Unfortunately, the DMCA made it even illegal to try to look at the
competitors work, (provided he had some kind of copyright protection
(or whatever the hell you want to call it) on their product.  Screw
copying, merely breaking the security is now wrong.

Feist is a great example of why the heck we need to kill the DMCA
though.

FWIW, I did a paper recently on the whole DMCA issue, in relation to
Trafficking and the DeCSS case.  If anyone is interested its at :
http://www.tstonramp.com/~carey/paperfinal.html



-- 
-BB 

Information wants to, and should always remain, free.
 karee                            mailto:karee at tstonramp.com