How Do You Define Fair Use?

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I remember once hearing someone say that if free speech is the right to buy a printing press, then fair use is the right to hire a lawyer.

It is just recently that the tables have started to turn against this cynical observation. The conversation around fair use and the Internet has benefited greatly by communities made possible by the web itself. Through sites like ChillingEffects.org, ordinary people and not lawyers, are beginning to fight for their rights to transform and build upon culture.

Everyone agrees that there is a place for fair use in a modern copyright regime, but the question is, to what extent are particular uses fair? If a mother video records her child dancing to a Prince song, does she have the right to distribute that video on YouTube? Does that video count as fair use? If not, is reasonable to say she is committing copyright infringement?

It is important to understand that while fair use has potential to protect some uses (particularly ones that are transformative, like parody or satire), it does not protect enough uses. As the web reaches farther places on the globe, the right to translate works and remix them is increasingly obvious. The need for copyright reform is clear, but there must also be work outside the push to broaden fair use, and I fervantly Creative Commons is part of this mission. This is also why a free culture is important -- being able to translate, share, build upon, and remix cultural works has been a crucial component of our society. We should not let maximalist copyright regimes distract us from this goal.