Klarinet Archive - Posting 000025.txt from 2009/02

From: "Mark Charette" <charette@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] Derivative Works
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:00:17 -0500

> Hang on. I think fair use covers making a copy
> for personal study if a person gets the original
> copyrighted work from a library or any other
> source.

You would have, in my opinion (and, of course, I am not a lawyer ), a very
thin defense of Fair Use if you make a copy of the whole. As Jonathan
posted, IRT the Fair Use clause (NB - "Fair Use" is essentially an
American law concept and doesn't apply in most other countries):

>(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as whole

Copying some small portion (let's say a couple of bars from a sonata) for
study and practice would most probably fall into Fair Use. Copying the
whole would be much more suspect.

Fair Use doesn't address what "amount and substantiality" mean. How can
you take an insubstantial portion of an Ogden Nash poem and study it? Only
when a case goes to court do we find out what Fair Use means, and even
then the decision may be so narrow as not to be useful in any other case.

------------------------------------------------------------------
The 2009 Woodwind.Org Donation Drive is going on right now - see
https://secure.donax-us.com/donation/ for more information.
------------------------------------------------------------------