NPR’s Morning Edition had a segment on this morning about the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Most specifically, they discussed how they believe fair use should work on the Web. An interesting listen, even if a little light on the law and big on rhetoric. Just saying “Fair use” does not magically make infringing activities legal. For an infinging use to be excused under fair use, it has to either fit into a specific exception or fit under an analysis using the 4 fair use factors of 17 USC Section 107. Even if under an exception, if particularly willful, some courts will still apply the 4 factor analysis.
The goal of the Fair Use project is to “lay the groundwork for artists and academics to use copyrighted work without permission in certain situations.” The real remedy here, however, is a political one: lobby to change copyright law to add an exception for the uses they envision.
