On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 07:57:38PM -0500, selussos wrote: > All of you have stated, endlessly, that you are not lawyers, and that is > obviously the case since many of your questions deal with 'fair use' > under the U.S. Copyright law. I would ask that you familiarize with that > definition and you will find that answers most, if not all, of your > questions. Fair use is an affirmative defense to infringement that can only be raised in court after one has been sued. But don't just take my word for it: Fair use must be pleaded as affirmative defense which means that a defendant accused of copyright violation bears the burden of proving in court that his copying was fair use, and therefore not infringement. A defendant may use a work claiming fair use, it is up to the copyright owner to bring the suit to obtain an injunction to prevent its use and/or to claim damages for a use that has already occurred. For this reason, some publishers frequently make claims of copyright infringement over uses that are most likely covered as fair use, hoping that the user will refrain from the use rather than spending resources in his defense. As well, publishers using other copyrighted materials may seek permission to use material that might fall under fair use; paying a royalty fee may be much less expensive than having a potential copyright infringement injunction stop the publication of a completed work in which a publisher has invested significant resources.[1] Due to the common practice of overreaching prohibitions by copyright holders on fair-use activity, it is must be the responsibility of a copyright holder in "Free" or "Open Source" to make clear and unambiguous the license terms extended to the general public. It is particularly important that copyright holders who write their own licenses do so, since it is reasonable for the public to believe that if any existing copyright license achieved the specific ends the copyright holder desired, an existing license would have been used. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use -- G. Branden Robinson | We either learn from history or, Debian GNU/Linux | uh, well, something bad will branden@debian.org | happen. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Bob Church
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