Reason #5 to ignore copyright
Fair use is a joke.

Fair use is supposed to be the trump card that protects your free speech rights over copyrights. It supposedly lets you use copyrighted material without having to be worried about being sued. There are all kinds of ways this could be useful. Quoting novels for school work, showing clips of movies for reviews, examples of poetry in textbooks, serenading your true love in public, and on and on.

Problem is, fair use laws are a sham. A fraud. A ... Well, you get the idea.

So here's the lowdown. Fair use doesn't tell us a dang thing about what we are allowed to do. It certainly isn't as plain as "you can do this, you can't do that." In fact, fair use doesn't come into play at all unless you are already being sued. Let me emphasize this. It is not fair use unless you are being sued, and a judge rules that your use was fair.

Now, if a lawsuit is required to determine fair use, how anxious do you think publishers and ISPs are to defend your right to use others' copyrighted material? That's right. Not at all. In fact, from what I understand, content publishers have their lawyers "clear rights" on every little bit of copyrighted material used in their productions. If they can't get permission to use the material, it just isn't used.

My understanding is that the only exception to this is parody. As long as you are clearly making fun of the work that you are using, it is unlikely enough that you will be sued that publishers will give it the go ahead. Unlikely, but not impossible. Even Weird Al, the King of musical parody gets permission. Remember: Any fair use, including parody, must be cleared by a judge.

For more information about fair use go to Stanford's Copyright and Fair Use Center. But be warned. There is enough info there to fill a large text book.

- posted by Dave @ 6:15 PM