On the seemingly inevitable march to greater and greater intellectual property protection, the proverbial pebble in the shoe comes in the form of a recent report from the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which concludes that one sixth of the gross domestic product in our increasingly IP oriented economy is due to activities deemed to be"fair use" under the Copyright laws.
Just as a brief refresher, the concept of "fair use" in copyright is not an entitlement or a right. It is, in short, a defense against claims for copyright infringement where the allegedly unauthorized use is not denied; in fact it is admitted but defended on the notion that the limited infringement is "fair" and, thus, not actionable.
This fair use defense essentially revolves around demonstrations of relatively de minimus infringement, done for a salutary purpose such as education or criticism, in a way which is transformative of the underlying copyrighted work and which, generally, doesn't harm the ability of the copyright holder to economically exploit the copyrighted work.
While the report may make you shake your head in the way it arrives at its conclusion that fair use contributed 4.5 trillion dollars to the economy last year, one can't help but wonder whether, if such a conclusion really gained concensus, the law would be changed to encourage more fair use or, rather to protect existing copyright holders by discouraging it.
