Re: Clarification (RE: "Fair Use" Is Getting Unfair Treatment)

[J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk]

Well:  if you buy a copy of a book, you can keep it indefinitely; you can
lend it to a friend; you can give it away; you can leave it to someone in
your will;  or you can sell it to a second-hand bookseller.  If you "buy"
an electronic information product, how many of those things can you do
before the publisher says you are breaking copyright?

Fytton Rowland,
Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK.

Quoting Rick Anderson <rickand@unr.edu>:

> A point of clarification:
>
> > Two recent federal court rulings in Hollywood's favor could undermine
> > consumers' historical rights to use the content they buy
>
> Actually, these rulings threaten to undermine consumers' historical
> rights to use content they do _not_ buy.  There's a big difference
> between buying a copy of, say, a book (which is generally what consumers
> do) and buyin the content of a book (which is generally what publishers
> do).  Fair use is about using content owned by others.
>
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu