Re: Fair Use Law

[Roger Williams <Roger -dot- Williams -at- GTNET -dot- COM>]

> Date:    Thu, 18 Dec 1997 07:58:35 -0700
> From:    "Parks, Beverly" <ParksB -at- EMH1 -dot- HQISEC -dot- ARMY -dot- MIL>
> Subject: Re: Fair Use Law
---snip---
> [The USA]
> makes online piracy a felony offense. The law "makes distributing
> illegal copies of online copyrighted material a federal crime if the
> value of the works is $2,500 or more." Max fine is 5 yrs in prison and
> $250,000 fine. The ACM  (Association for Computing Machinery) thinks
> that "the law would undermine the public's right to use portions of
> copyrighted material under the U.S. 'fair use' doctrine." The full story
> is at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,17443,00.html


Also interesting from the other perspective. A large company could claim its
material has a very high value - as Bell once claimed the "value" of a document
downloaded by a hacker to be the labour cost of the people who created it.

But if the document is on retail sale (e.g. an author's entire book) is its
"value" its retail value? - the retail cost of a prolific author's entire works
wouldn't be $2,500. Does the "value of the works" here mean "the value of the
copyright"? Also, is it less than $2,500 in one's entire life, or on one web
page, or on a group of web pages which can be navigated one from the other - in
how may steps
(???!!!)  Someone hasn't thought about this law.


	http://www.documentation.com/, or http://www.dejanews.com/