Digital Pulp Blog

We’ve all read the wikipedia definition of FAIR USE and have spent more hours than we would care to admit reviewing the four factors in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. But we still struggle with how to apply the rules in the real world. This weekend NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed Joel Rose in an attempt to bring clarity to the issue of what exactly is ‘fair use.’

Mr. ROSE: Artists, filmmakers, reporters and commentators have the right to take copyrighted materials without permission or payment, says McIntosh, as long as they’re using those materials to make something new. It’s the same principle that the producers of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central employ every night.

What we found really interesting in this interview was how important the Sony-Betamax case was back in 1984.

Mr. ROSE: That applies not just to content but to the devices that deliver it. Sohn says fair use is what gives you the right to record TV shows and watch them later, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the so-called Betamax case.

Ms. SOHN: Imagine if in 1984, after the Sony-Betamax decision had come out, we had said, OK, we’re going to stop there. You can record things for home use, and that’s the limit of personal fair use. You wouldnt have MP3 players like the iPod; you know, we probably wouldn’t have TiVos that could send things to your computers.

Read the Full Story at NPR | Wikipedia Definition | U.S. Copyright Office Definition

Because this blog post is meant for educational purposes and we only published a small portion of the interview with the goal of driving users to the original work, we see providing excerpts from this interview as fair use.