Exercising Fair Use Has Gotten A Lot More Difficult For Consumers
With the advent of Digital Rights Management, exercising fair use has gotten a lot more difficult for consumers. For instance, whereas analog VHS tapes could be copied fairly easily with off-the-shelf equipment, Blu-Ray discs are protected with strong encryption that until recently could not be broken. In many cases, DRM prevents media files from being duplicated or altered in any way, even for purposes that would otherwise be legitimate. Because of DRM, consumers who simply wish to make a backup copy of a movie they bought must resort to complicated hacks.
Yet perhaps an even greater obstacle to fair use than Digital Rights Management itself is the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Among the DMCA’s provisions is a section commonly known as the “Anti-Circumvention Clause,” which makes illegal any devices or technologies capable of circumventing copy-protection systems. Because legitimate business cannot design software that allows consumers to backup or time-shift content without running afoul of the DMCA, even relatively trivial encryption may, from a consumer’s point of view, render a movie impossible to backup. As it stands, anyone wishing to copy a DVD cannot do so without first acquiring illegal software, even when the reason for the copying falls under fair use.
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All use that doesn't make money for the consumer is fair use. If I want to share an MP3 with my friends online, I will do so. If I want to quote part or all of an article in a blog, I will do so.
As long as you credit properly, I agree.
But here is another problem. A law could be made reworking usage of IP in general, with the intent of protecting digital businesses. It it, within the laws of the land, made sharing of consumer digital products illegal , then the fair use is not relevant.
I mean, call it whatever, but the intent of our economic system is that consumer products generate revenue. And it would have a much much greater throughput if money was made for all of the IP that get's "shared". I mean, I despise consumerism and like to see the profiteering man get it, and all that. But most people "sharing" files don't give a crap about any of that - they just want to strech a buck. If we stayed honest and kept business honest (and controlled by the origin of the products - usually artists) the buck would be streched, probably a great deal more, but the throughput of revenue lowering prices.
Or one would hope.
The DMCA is not necessarily an impediment to the exercising of 'Fair Use' rights on a global scale. It is a piece of US legislation that multinational media corporations have been trying to force the spread of and/or use to strong arm other jurisdictions into taking down potentially infringing content.
I personally have witnessed my sister/mother/family purchasing multiple copies of a single movie because my nephew is rather brutal with the discs. At $20 a pop its not as painful although it has gotten me to seriously consider mass making of our legally guaranteed right (in Canada) to the creation of back-up copies and use those back-up copies for playing it instead of the originals.
In order to hi-light the lack of the DMCA's global jurisdiction I point to the high profile legal case in Sweden where the owners of The Pirate Bay are being brought up on charges and sued as a result of being a .torrent indexing website because some of the torrents points to copyrighted files (but they dont host those files on their servers).
Look up the Sony Root Kit Fiasco at some point. The idea of a site that is outside of the US Jurisdiction would go to such lengths as to post their DMCA letters on their website and make fun of them would be so shocking when they do not comply? Do these companies really expect passing laws in the US to instantly be taken up world wide under threat of bombing? That is probably the RIAA/MPAA's wet dream. Just look up what they're trying to pass with the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) a treaty being negotiated behind closed doors, written by big media companies requiring NDA's before people can see the contents of it even. Laws and treaties which will result in legal changes should not be created behind closed doors.