Re: Fish or fowl?

["Peter Banks" <pbanks@diabetes.org>]

Publishers who own copyrights don't have the right to determine what
constitutes fair use. What they do have is the ability to sue those whom
they judge have violated copyright agreements in ways not protected by
fair use.

There is no 500-word standard, or even rule of thumb. People have been
sued successfully for copyright infingements for far fewer words than 500.
For example, The Nation magazine was successfully sued for using less than
400 words of President Ford' memoirs (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v.
Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539 (1985)).

Google's practice is unlikely to be protected by fair use; it meets none
of the four standards required to mount a successful defense (see
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html#1).

OA advocates should not encourage authors to violate copyright agreements
they have signed; they should instead urge them not to sign such
agreements in the first place.

Peter Banks
Publisher
American Diabetes Association
703/299-2033
FAX 703/683-2890
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org

>>> strosow@uwo.ca 06/13/05 5:13 PM >>>

Since when do publishers have the right to determine what constitues
"acceptable fair use"?  I don't see anything in the Copyright Act that
delegates such rulemaking authority to the publishers. Have I missed a
recent amendment?

Sam Trosow
University of Western Ontario