Canada’s Debate

So about a week ago while I was embroiled in several debates about copyright issues here in Canada I decided to open a poll. The debates and the poll were designed with one issue in mind: to tease out what “fair use” is, and to try and determine if bloggers were within its dictates. The conclusion I reached at this point was this: when blogger’s post an entire article or other work, regardless of how much citation they offer, they are violating the copyright.

My personal standard is never more than two consecutive paragraphs at a time, only material which is necessary to elucidate my own criticism/review (which is the basis of my fair dealings) and never more than 10% of the copyrighted material. I’d be curious to know how other bloggers feel about their own practises in this area; it certainly seems to me like the post linked to at the top of this one is infringing on the copyright of the Detroit Free Press… but I’m no lawyer.

I started the poll in the hopes of teasing out where people felt that line actually was; and so far nobody has really publicly said so, they’ve just voted… and much to my surprise they have voted that full-text reproduction is not infringement. Since this certainly appears to fly in the face of logic or reason, I’ve used some harsh language, and (not to my surprise) some readers have taken umbrage. To them I say this: kiss my grits! Truth is subjective, but if someone has an opinion that seems to defy conventional wisdom, and they can’t offer a defence then I can only assume that they have none worth sharing.