[tlug] Copyright and TLUG (was: Perhaps of intereste to Sci Fi Fans)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Josh Glover writes:

 > On 01/09/07, Shawn <javajunkie@example.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > I was curious on fair use and looked into that at
 > > http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
 > 
 > That section would seem to indicate that I can copy the entirety of a
 > copyrighted work and redistribute it on this list, since it is for the
 > purpose of criticism, comment, or news reporting, depending on how you
 > look at it. But that does not seem quite right in terms of how
 > copyright law is applied in the US.

No.  First, "fair use" is AFAIK a U.S.-only concept, it doesn't even
exist in other common-law jurisdictions such as England IIRC.  Japan
definitely doesn't have it, rather there are explicit (and very
restricted) exceptions in the law.

Second, remember that copyright applies to the expression, not the
content, of an "original work of authorship".  If you are going to do
criticism of the style of a haiku, it's hard to see how you can avoid
reproducing the whole thing.  However, if you are going to criticize
_Ulysses_, you can probably prove your point with less than 0.01% of
the text.  Any further reproduction of it is a violation.  If your
interest is in criticizing the plot (assuming _Ulysses_ even has a
plot, of course), then you may not be able to quote it at all, but
will have to resort to a paraphrase.  It is a "rule of reason" issue,
that is, it's up to the judge, as a prototypical "reasonable person",
to decide.  There are guidelines and as always you can appeal to a
higher court, but basically the law admits that this is pretty
subjective.

Again, only if the exact wording is newsworthy (eg, a fraudulent legal
contract) would "news reporting" justify reproduction of a copyrighted
work.

Note that a .mil site probably needs to have explicit copyright
notice, as the U.S. government is not allowed to claim copyright in
works it produces (this is intended to prevent the absurd kind of
thing that the MOF does, copyrighting the Japanese legal code and
charging everybody an arm and a leg to get a copy; at least they don't
have the emperor declare laws top secret any more!)  The government
can *acquire* copyright, however, and these days for things like
software it is often the case that the government licenses use of
software and such from a contractor ... so the fact that it's a .mil
or .gov site doesn't mean you can copy freely.  You probably can't get
socked with criminal (ie, intentional) violation unless there's a
notice, though.

 > Here at TLUG, I think we will want to err on the side of caution when
 > it comes to copyrighted material.

*All* original works of authorship are copyrighted according to the
Berne Convention and WIPO.  If it's worth copying and it wasn't
written by an employee of the U.S. government, you had better have
pretty good proof that it's out of copyright (either the term expired,
or there was an explicit dedication to the public domain, preferably
registered with the copyright office)---or a license, which is what
free software is all about.