I noticed an article on Boing Boing this afternoon called What If Copyright Law Were Strongly Enforced in the Blogosphere? by Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. Solove believes that bloggers have been getting away with some pretty serious copyright infringment--though for very obvious and defensible reasons. Solove ponders what would happen if the mainstream media began using chilling effects tactics like the RIAA has used against file sharers. For some reason, though, I have doubts that the mainstream media would have much success with such a campaign. The waves of horrid publicity such actions would generate would probably cause a backlash--probably ending up in Congress where laws protecting the bloggers would be set in stone.
Strong Copyright Enforcement and the Blogosphere
Submitted by platypus matt on December 15, 2005 - 16:15.
- platypus matt's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Fear not
Solove erects a poorly constructed house-of-cards of rampant copyright abuse among bloggers, and then not-so-cleverly proceeds to blow it over. According to Solove (note my use of attribution), “We bloggers have, to put it mildly, a very robust concept of fair use.” Where is the evidence that bloggers are violating copyright law in wholesale fashion? I suggest Solove speak for himself.
I am sure there are abuses, as in anything, but most of what I see out there (a personal observation and not derived from any empirical study) comes under the Fair Use exemption in U.S. copyright law which allows a writer to quote from a copyrighted work for two purposes: comment and criticism, and parody. Most blogging falls under one or both of these categories.
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a...
I for one am fastidious about attribution, and about quoting only as much from an article as is needed to make my point. What makes the blogosphere interesting is the thoughtful context and commentary it can offer immediately following the president’s speech, a degree of relevance and meaningfulness not found in a transcript of the speech or in the superficial network coverage of the speech. And when a soldier can blog from inside a moving tank in Iraq, who now owns immediacy, authenticity and credibility?
I suggest that if the media is afraid of anything, it is not a violation of copyright, but a violation of their primacy as a source of current news, opinion and interpretation. And there is no law prohibiting this change, so bloggers need not fear as long as they even roughly adhere to the Fair Use exemption.