Currently viewing the category: "Fair Use"

Stop the Internet, we want to get off!

On September 13, 2011 By

It seems I spoke too soon.  Only hours after I posted on this site a comment about why the HathiTrust orphan works project should not be controversial came news that the US Authors Guild, joined by similar associations in two other countries and eight individual authors, has filed suit to enjoin Hathi from proceeding [...]

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Why is adopting orphans controversial?

On September 12, 2011 By

Ever since Duke, along with Cornell, Emory and Johns Hopkins Universities, announced that we would be participants in the Hathi Trust’s Orphan Works project, I have been talking with a number of different reporters, trying to explain what the project is and why we are doing it.  I was rather pleased to see that [...]

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An easy fair use ruling, but with a message

On August 16, 2011 By

The case of Brownmark Films v. Comedy Partners, which was decided last month in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, raises two really interesting issues for this blog.  I plan to address one of them — fair use — now and save the other for a subsequent post.

I do not want to rehearse the [...]

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Licenses, prices, fair use and GSU

On August 3, 2011 By

When the trial of the Georgia State copyright infringement lawsuit closed last month, the Judge asked both sides to file post-trial briefs, outlining their proposals for findings of fact and conclusions of law that they think the court should make.  They are extensive documents, representing the last chance each side has to make its arguments, [...]

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Why Can’t I Digitize My (Institution’s) Library?

On July 27, 2011 By

By David Hansen, J.D., Scholarly Communications Intern

On Tuesday Judge Denny Chin set a deadline of mid-September for Google, the Authors Guild, and the AAP to work out a settlement for Google Books. The lawsuit, filed in 2005, seems to have been going on forever, and I wonder what, in the meantime, libraries can do [...]

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A nightmare scenario for higher education

On May 13, 2011 By

In anticipation of the trial starting on Monday in the copyright infringement case brought against Georgia State University by Cambridge, Oxford and Sage publishers, and partially financed by the Copyright Clearance Center, there has been a flurry of motions, mostly relating to the admission of various pieces of evidence.  But amongst that deluge of paper [...]

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Old law and modern lawsuits

On May 12, 2011 By

Champerty is one of those ancient and obscure legal concepts that date from the Middle Ages and just beg, in my opinion at least, to be investigated and explicated.

The basic problem that rules against champerty address is the buying and selling of legal claims.  At it’s most egregious, champerty involves someone making a frivolous [...]

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On the fair use rollarcoaster

On April 26, 2011 By

This is one of those weeks with lots of ups and downs.  Recent decisions and issues about fair use take us on a roller coaster ride, I am afraid, as we find both good news and bad in the reports.

The case brought by Righthaven in which the judge indicated that he would find that [...]

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Getting the whole picture

On April 18, 2011 By

There has been a lot of attention paid to YouTube’s announcement of its “Copyright School,” which those accused of infringement will be forced to attend online.  YouTube, of course, is trying to fend off more litigation, but that should not be an excuse for misrepresenting copyright law, as the new video that is part [...]

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The good side of a bad lawsuit

On March 31, 2011 By

For those of us who believe that education and technological innovation require more space in the fair use analysis than courts usually recognize, there was an interesting decision recently that might be heartening if it were not so heavily dependent on the fact that the plaintiff in the case was so unsympathetic.

In this case, [...]

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