need help writing a paper on Fair use rights

[cypher_soundz]

Hello,
I am currently writing a paper on fair use and the fact that the government is trying to stop any kind of backing up copywrite curcumvention. The fact that people can use fair use as an excuse to promote illegal activities such as distributing files on to p2p networks is also of intrest. I was wondering if any one had any intresting links to material i could reference? Any good sites showing statistics on the material,would also be of help.

Regards
Cyph

[Neo Neko]

Well first of all it's not the government. They are just paid patsys for the most part. It's the media release companies/monopolies. They tried all this before but the government told them to go !@#$% themselves. They said that technologies like VCRs and cassett decks were not going to be the end of the media companies. And they were not. If anything they increased the business and revenu the media companies got.

What's different is that this time around is that the media companies have been padding senators pockets much deeper and much longer than previously and they have the perfect fall guy. So called anonymous P2P file sharing services. You could draw a correlary that if they simply embraced such services like they were forced to do with VCR and tapes that they would see another increase in revenu and increased consumer consumption. And I have very little doubt that they would indeed. Unfortunatly for many of us here we have a skewed perception on this subject. We are all rather early adopters. Most of the rest of the world is rather adverse to change. In fact they fight it. Which is what the media companies are doing. I see people every day that don't have DVD players let alone DVDs or even CDs and CD players. We would say it was rather pathetic. In some instances we simply become incapable of relating to those that don't own a PC. We are just waiting for them to catch up with us. And they are fighting it tooth and nail all the way.

Second people can not use fair use as an excuse to promote illegal activities such as sharing content outside it's license on P2P networks. Fair use is legal use. It can't be used to justify illegal use. Most people on P2P are violating fair use. The trick is that it is possible to use P2P services and not break fair use laws. People sharring copyrighted materials are always in violation of the materials license and fair use. But those downloading may or may not be in violation as well. If they own legal licensed copies of the original work then downloading a format or time shifted version from someone else is actually 100% legal! Hence the reason that everyone is going after those sharring right now and not downloading. Lets not kidd ourselves though. Most times both parties are guilty as hell.

Unfortunatly there are no good resources that are not violently skewed one way or another. Perhaps if you read both sides you could find the truth somewhere in the middle. Unfortunatly you would likely only end up being more confused. To much legaleese involved. Perhaps an easier subtopic to look at is the DMCA and how it's stipulations against circumventing encryption even for content you own is unconstitutional or at the very least illegal in it's own right since it specifically revokes rights previously granted with no solid justification. There is plenty of action there and it is a much clearer topic.

[cypher_soundz]

Many thanks!
I now see how my topic would of got me no were. The dmca is a very good topic to look at, thank you for the advice :D.
Thanks again
Cyph

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
People sharring copyrighted materials are always in violation of the materials license and fair use. But those downloading may or may not be in violation as well. If they own legal licensed copies of the original work then downloading a format or time shifted version from someone else is actually 100% legal! I have done this several times for movies that I own on DVD for the purpose of editing. If I want a niece or nephew to be able to watch a movie, but there are some scenes that I don't want them to see, then I just edit them out. Downloading it saves me the time of ripping it myself.

I am rather bitter about this because before DVDs started shipping, one of the big features that was being touted was the ability to pick the rating that you wanted to watch. IE, if you wanted to show a rated R movie movie to some younger kids pick the PG or PG-13 version for playback and it uses a different audio track and/or leaves out some scenes. Its not like it would take that much work as they already edit a lot of more popular movies for showing on airplanes. But because I live in the US, decrypting a DVD to edit it is illegal. :rolleyes: