MARCH 2008
Finding the limits to fair use on the internet
The internet has issued many challenges to traditional copyright law - not least in the area of fair use. Stephen Meyers reviews the leading US cases to explain where the courts have set the limits
| One-minute read |
| The internet has presented IP owners, and the courts, with a whole range of new challenges, not least when it comes to determining how the principles of fair use can, and should, be applied to the internet age. In this article, Stephen Meyers examines the US statute that sets out the fair use defence to copyright infringement, and assesses how the courts have applied the rules in practice. He focuses on six key cases: Kelly v Arriba, Video Pipeline v Buena Vista Home Entertainment, A&M Records v Napster, UMG Recordings v MP3.COM, Field v Google and SARL Louis Feraud International v SA Pierre Balmain and concludes that considerations that were traditionally taken into account to decide whether a use is fair may play a smaller role in future disputes involving internet copying. Instead, consideration of the transformative character of a copy – a relatively infrequent concern in off-line copying – may well come to the forefront. |
The internet has had a profound impact on nearly all aspects of copyright law, including the doctrine of fair use. Copyright owners have had to contend with an increasingly digitized world in which replication of a work can yield not only a copy that is indistinguishable from the original, but one that can be reproduced endlessly and disseminated worldwide in an instant.
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