Artificial Light
sunset porn #4423, give or take
Fair use is the basis of 90 percent of B12's content, and we're not an aberration among the denizens of blogtopia (y!sctp).
The tale: A publisher objected to the use of a table and a figure in an blog post about anti-oxidants so the blogger was forced to remove them from her post.
Cognitive Daily: Is reprinting a figure “fair use”? :
Should she have gone to all that trouble to comply with the publisher's demands? Doesn't the “fair use” doctrine allow reviewers to use excerpts from a work in critical commentary? Unfortunately, the copyright code isn't as clear as it ought to be on this issue. It says that “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” That seems clear enough, but here are the considerations the code lists to be used in determining whether a reproduction of a work qualifies:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The whole thing is horribly ambiguous. While the code makes a distinction between “commercial” and “nonprofit educational,” it doesn't spell out whether this provision supersedes the others. Surely “news reporting” is a commercial activity, yet it is specified as non-infringing. If a teacher photocopies textbooks instead of making her students buy them, then surely that has a negative impact on the value of the book, even though she's working for a non-profit institution. A bad book review might have a negative impact on sales, but surely reviewers have the right to publish clips from the book to make their point.
I wouldn't even claim to have all (or any of) the answers about this contentious issue, but I'm still dismayed at the actions of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
