Technological Fair Use

The Article proposes a framework tailoring fair use specifically for technology cases. At the inception of the twenty-first century, information technologies have become increasingly central to the U.S. economy. Not surprisingly, complex copyright cases involving speech technologies, such as DVRs, mp3 devices, Google Book Search, and YouTube, have increased as well. Yet existing copyright law, developed long before digital technologies, is ill-prepared to handle the complexities these technology cases pose. The key question often turns, not on prima facie infringement, but on the defense of fair use, which courts have too often relegated to extremely fact-specific decisions. The downside to this ad hoc adjudication of fair use is that it leads to great uncertainty over what is permissible in a way that may retard innovation in speech technologies. This Article addresses this ongoing problem by offering a proposal for courts to recognize a specific type of fair use - technological fair use - and to tailor the four fair use factors accordingly. Technological fair use is supported not only by a synthesis of existing case law, but also, more importantly, by the constitutional underpinnings of the First Amendment and the Copyright and Patent Clause, as well as economic theory

Technological Fair Use

The Article proposes a framework tailoring fair use specifically for technology cases. At the inception of the twenty-first century, information technologies have become increasingly central to the U.S. economy. Not surprisingly, complex copyright cases involving speech technologies, such as DVRs, mp3 devices, Google Book Search, and YouTube, have increased as well. Yet existing copyright law, developed long before digital technologies, is ill-prepared to handle the complexities these technology cases pose. The key question often turns, not on prima facie infringement, but on the defense of fair use, which courts have too often relegated to extremely fact-specific decisions. The downside to this ad hoc adjudication of fair use is that it leads to great uncertainty over what is permissible in a way that may retard innovation in speech technologies. This Article addresses this ongoing problem by offering a proposal for courts to recognize a specific type of fair use - technological fair use - and to tailor the four fair use factors accordingly. Technological fair use is supported not only by a synthesis of existing case law, but also, more importantly, by the constitutional underpinnings of the First Amendment and the Copyright and Patent Clause, as well as economic theory

Internet career fairs in Australian higher education

[Abstract]: Internet Career Fairs have become a feature of the Australian graduate employment recruitment market. Internet Career Fairs offer considerable benefits in terms of resources and marketing by employers. They also offer an additional form of access to employment information that is used by students to explore their graduate employment opportunities. With the advent of Web.2 technology and sophisticated platforms such as Second Life, there is far greater potential to expand the interactivity and appeal of internet Career Fairs. In context of a description of the broader use of internet technology used for the delivery of career development services in Australia and its universities, this briefly paper describes the first 3-dimensional internet Career Fair established on the Second Life platform by an Australian university Career Service

Awareness regarding plagiarism and fair use of copyrighted work: a survey amongst Doctoral Students of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow

In this information society, the new information occurs within microseconds and is also accessible to the wide range of users. Technology is developing day-by-day, and the ways of accessing information are also getting changed. In this digital world, the information is easily available and because of this, misuse of information is increasing. This creates a threat to the original creative work. Therefore, management of copyright is a new issue. With the existence of several laws and acts, the violation of copyright is still going-on in every field and in different parts of the world. This violation of copyright is a worldwide problem, mainly due to the people are still less aware about Intellectual property Right (IPR) and especially copyright in academic world. Due to wide use of information technology, now it become possible to access the information easily through databases, Internet, electronic resources in various formats. Standing within this state of our society, the investigator selected the present topic and decided to conduct the study on doctoral students. Doctoral students are considered as the generator of new information so it cannot be overemphasized that they should be aware about copyright. This study has been conducted to investigate and explore the awareness of plagiarism and fair use among the doctoral students. The paper deals with the basic concept of copyright, fair use and plagiarism and presented the findings related to awareness of copyright, various issues of copyright, treatment of quotation, level of awareness regarding plagiarism, various anti-plagiarism software, and awareness regarding fair use

Analysis of Advertisement based Business Model under Technological Advancements in Fair Use Personal Recording Services: A Law and Economics Approach

Recent technological advancements such as cloud based digital video recording services and advertisement-skipping services are threatening copyright holders’ business models more than ever. This paper introduces an economic model to analyze court rulings on the personal fair use of video recording technologies. Although personal video recorders might have been beneficial for copyright holders in the past, newer and more innovative information technologies have the potential to restrict copyright holders’ usual distribution channels, namely live airing and video on demand. By linking a law and economics approach with the characteristics of information technology, this paper provides a new perspective to explain the effects of copyright law on the business strategies of copyright holders under the threat of new kinds of information technologies. The court may have to consider adjusting the boundaries of fair use according to match such rapid technological development. Business managers should also be aware that this combination of legal rulings and information technology may create either benefits or disruptions

Restructuring the German Outpatient Health Care System: An Economic and IT Perspective

Among other proposals to reform the German outpatient health care system the establishment of networks of cooperating physicians (doctors’ networks) has found high and controversial consideration in recent years. In this paper we analyze doctors’ networks both from an economic perspective, particularly with a view on network strategies, and the perspective of supporting information technologies. Our main conclusions are that the viability of doctors’ networks critically depends on trust-building mechanisms like the restriction of the network in size and complexity and the application of fair profit allocation rules. Concerning information technology the implementation and use of highly integrated interorganizational systems appears most promising. We propose an architecture of such systems. It integrates information technology along the medical, the business and the communication systems dimension and serves as a vehicle for efficient use of shared patient data and other network resources, knowledge creation, fair profit allocation, improved business control and a high level of integrity vis-a-vis the patient

Perceptions of Librarians on the Usefulness of DRM Technology in Protecting against Copyright Violation

The purpose of the study was to establish the perceptions of librarians on the usefulness of digital rights management systems in digital libraries as mechanisms of securing digital content from copyright violation in order to assess the general usefulness of the DRM technology. The study used Strathmore University library and Moi University Nairobi Campus library as the case studies. A Census was carried out because the population under study was small with a total of 34 respondents. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed in this study. The study established that there exists a positive correlation between the awareness of DRM systems and the use of digital content in Libraries. The study also established that DRM systems limit fair use of information. The respondents felt that DRM systems prevent fair use such as sharing articles and other information from e-resources with colleagues and that it also bars fair use of information since it forces users to access material in small chunks. Finally, the study established some e-books & e-journals are easily downloadable by unauthorized users’ despite being locked with DRM technology. The study will benefit the government agencies in charge of copyright and Digital media such as Copyright Society of Kenya in that it will be able to amend and/or create policies that will embrace DRM technologies and discourage copyright infringement in digital libraries. This is because the research outlines the benefits, challenges & loopholes of DRM technologies usage and further gives recommendations on the measures to counter the challenge

Software copyright: fairness analysis through the parallel link between users and authors

Until lawmakers harmonize the relationship between copyright owners and users within the context of software copyright, it will remain a controversial topic within the legal field. The ongoing conflict of interests between copyright owners and users along with the increasing complexities of technology make the situation of software copyright more complicated. It is something that the doctrine of fair use/dealing aims to stabilize. In the past few decades, the doctrine of fair use/dealing has evolved towards more complex recording and sharing tools, such as the peer-to-peer networks. However, the court rulings that involve fair use/dealing in software copyright cases contain many inconsistencies. Many of these inconsistencies are caused by the continuous enforcement of software copying restrictions, which have made software copying acts that used to be fair as, instead, copyright infringements. In addition, the test that determines the fairness of copying acts contains some ambiguities. Nevertheless, fair use/dealing has achieved some balance in terms of the legal powers between copyright owners and users and to preserves, to some extent, copyright’s true purpose, which is to maintain the flow of knowledge and information through proper promotion and dissemination not only to protect the interests of copyright owners. Furthermore, cases related to software copyright prove that the law should not stand in the way of technological progress or to enact laws that impede its function. Instead, law should guide technology to a safe path that guarantees the best of interests for all parties. This paper argues that reconciling the fair use/dealing with interests of copyright owners and users should be based on examining the interaction between users and authors and its impact on the community at large instead of determining the legitimacy of the consumers’ use. This path will require a mechanism that properly weighs the needs and interests of both the copyright owners and users. A mechanism that includes contribution, alternate modes of dissemination, technological neutrality, and proportionality stricto sensu is a capable tool for such cases