[A2k] Fwd: Media giants start whisper campaign to kill Fair Use

[Michelle Childs]

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> Michelle Childs
> Head of European Affairs
> Knowledge Ecology International
> michelle.childs@keionline.org
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> "The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we
> have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same
> level of thinking at which we created them=94  Albert Einstein
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> Begin forwarded message:
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>> Date: 8 April 2008 17:31:25 BST
>> Subject: Media giants start whisper campaign to kill Fair Use
>> Source: Boing Boing
>> Author: Cory Doctorow
>>
>> William Patry, the Google lawyer who formerly worked for the US
>> Register of Copyrights, has a blog-post in which he outs a global
>> anti-Fair-Use "whisper campaign" orchestrated by the big
>> entertainment companies. The big media companies are trying to
>> convince the world's governments that the USA's statutory
>> exceptions to copyright (embodied in Fair Use) are so broad that
>> they violate the centuries-old Berne Convention, a widely adopted
>> copyright treaty. Berne is extremely rigid, and what's more, it's
>> nearly impossible to update, since any amendments to it require
>> signatures from all the governments that have signed it since the
>> 1800s. Further, accession to Berne is a condition of many other
>> trade agreements, so many countries are required to adopt Berne laws.
>> If the entertainment giants can convince the world's governments
>> that Fair Use violates Berne, it might mean that the US will be
>> forced by a trade court to eliminate it in favor of something far
>> more restrictive.
>>
>> The counter-reformation movement is presently at the stage of a
>> whispering campaign, in which ministries in countries are told that
>> fair use (and by extension possible liberal fair dealing
>> provisions) violate the "three-step" test. And who wants to violate
>> the three-step after all? The appeal by counter-reformation forces
>> to external and abstract concepts like the three-step test is a
>> time-worn tactic: when you can't win on the merits, shift the
>> debate elsewhere to grounds on which you think you can win. Given
>> that few ministry officials are experts in copyright law, much less
>> arcana like the three-step test, these appeals -- made by those who
>> claim to be such experts -- can be effective. They shouldn't be.
>> National governments should make policy decisions based on the
>> merits of the proposals, free from such scare tactics. The three-
>> step test is not a bar to a single proposal of which I am aware.
>> The biggest of the three-step scare tactics is that Section 107 of
>> the U.S. Copyright Act is incompatible with the test. Baloney. WIPO
>> and European copyright experts testified before the U.S. Congress
>> during the hearings on U.S. adherence to Berne, hearings that
>> spanned four years: 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988: there was no lack
>> of time or opportunity to raise any concerns. Congress even went to
>> Geneva and convened a round table discussion there on November 25
>> and 26, 1987 with WIPO and European copyright experts, the sole
>> purpose of which was to determine which parts of U.S. law needed to
>> be amended to permit Berne adherence. Not once at this round table
>> or during four years of hearings were the words "fair use" ever
>> raised by a foreign expert who appeared before Congress nor did any
>> domestic witness (of whom there were many dozens) consider there to
>> be a potential problem. (A transcript of the round table is
>> reproduced in the House Hearings: "Berne Convention Implementation
>> Act of 1987, Serial No. 50, 100th Congress, 1st & 2d sessions 1135-
>> 1213(1987, 1988)). I can say from direct experience of having been
>> involved in these efforts at the Copyright Office that I never
>> heard a single European expert claim there was a compatibility
>> issue with fair use.
>>
>> Link (via /.)
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>> Read more=85
>>
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