Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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> The very first Copyright Act in the US was actually titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." Current copyright law is explicit that fair use covers this sort of situation:

(the OP links to here:) http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

> Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

It appears to me that the OP is misreading the law. From what I can tell, the law says that if a copy/reproduction of a work is fair use...including for classroom purposes...then it is not an infringement of copyright.

The OP interprets this as: "If something is reproduced for classroom use, then it is fair use"

That is not at all correct. Check out this primer about fair use and education: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/...

The short summary of it is: You can't just copy whatever you want for purposes of teaching and assume that it is "fair use".

Maybe someone more well-versed in the law can correct me, but from what I can tell (I've had some education in this, but not a formal law degree), the OP is quite a bit wrong in his assumptions.

Those appear to be Stanford's own guidelines on the subject. As far as I know, there are no actual hard and fast rules and one has to decide on a case-by-case basis after applying the four factor test. That part of the statute seems to be there because legislators believed that making a bunch of copies of something for classroom use was likely to be fair use and there was enough concern over protecting that use case to mention it explicitly.

Incidentally, there are many sets of guidelines like the one you cite. Here are a couple others:

http://www.adec.edu/admin/papers/fair10-17.html

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=copyrightarticle&...

There are no "hard and fast rules" on fair use, just as there are no "hard and fast rules" about what makes slander, slander. Or what makes police brutality, brutal (in an illegal sense). But yet both are still against the law.

I'm not saying that it's easy to define fair use. I'm saying the OP seems to have a dishonest reading of the law if he's trying to assert that "fair use" means academia can reproduce copyrighted work and consider it "fair" because it's for educational purposes. That is completely missing the entire concept of "fair use".

The fact is that a teacher making a bunch of copies of something as hand-outs for their class is so common and benign a use case as to be mentioned in the statute, just to ensure that it could not be precluded by factor #3. Educational use itself is part of factor #1.

In any scenario where a teacher was copying educational materials for a class, I would have a hard time seeing it as anything but fair use barring unusual circumstances. Which was, I think, the point they were trying to make.

If a student starts working at a company and uses such info. Then that would make some companies get information for free. While other companies or private persons have to pay for it. that's unfair it discriminates people and companies. The law should be equal to anyone and not favor some lucky. Basically any tax payer makes universities possible and so all their information should be free.

I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding of the situation here. Fair use covers how much of a copyright-protected work can be reproduced, not whether a work should enjoy copyright protections (as opposed to being put out in the public domain).

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