Canada's Debate

Given my earlier post, and my participation in a related discussion over at Abandoned Stuff I figure I should explain what exactly “Fair Use” is, at least so far as I understand it.

Quite simply, Fair Use is a legal mechanism for balancing the rights and interests of a copyright holder with those of the material possessor and society at large. The reason why we need to discuss Fair Use right now is not because the Recording Industry tells us to, but rather because the current Fair Use doctrine no longer provides an adequate balance.

To wit, if I create a glorious new manuscript (highly unlikely given my writing skills) the work remains entirely in my rights. I can do whatever I want with it. If I sell said manuscript to a publisher, I retain some rights including control over the creative content, etc., and some rights (to distribute for example) pass on to that publisher. If that publisher prints the books then some rights pass on to whomever purchases the books, while it remains in control over distribution rights (hence why the new owner can’t make their own copies for sale) and the copyright holder retains some original rights as well (which is why the new owner cannot plagiarize the contained material.) Now, FAIR USE laws are designed to balance the rights of each and all with society at large. Without those laws for example, a library could purchase a book but students could not quote that book in an academic project without breaking the library’s copyright.

The current situation is no different… an artist records a song, sells certain rights to a distributor (a record label), and consumers purchase limited rights to that song either by purchasing a reproduction of it. As it stands, there are extremely limited protections in Canadian copyright laws for the original copyright holder, and DRM is being touted as the obvious solution (a conclusion I am not convinced of.)