Since this thread was moved to off-topic, I feel compelled to respond to a logical error the Phil Holland repeats about copyright, fair-use, and censorship. He says:
The logical error of the above is that it presumes that any use of existing material covered by copyright provides EXCLUSIVE and ABSOLUTE rights relative to the use of that material. Copyright provides LIMITED exclusivity, and there is (or was) a doctrine of fair use, not for the purposes of ripping somebody off by selling their work as your own, but by providing the opportunity to recontextualize the work, to transform it, to provide commentary, etc. We have seen attacks on such fair use, such as a warning before sporting events that all descriptions, images, scores, statistics, etc., are the sole property of the league and that nobody can even discuss their experiences of the game without express permission. Nobody takes that seriously, but legally that's where we are, and if somebody were to make JUNEBUG today, the NFL would likely strike down the movie on the grounds that one of the characters talks about the results of a football game. Which is obnoxious from a fair-use perspective--why should American filmmakers not be able to illustrate an aspect of one of their characters by showing their relationship to one of America's favorite sports?I'll give you a slightly different example. Instead of Moore backed documentary, let's say Disney used 7 shots of your without permission in a trailer for Avengers XV. It was released and received much attention as it was a marketed effort for financial gain on a legitimate production.
Describe the steps that you can take in attempting to contact Disney and get them to remove the trailer, potentially just seek out compensation because even with a new edit the damage has been done, and perhaps the effort to get them to not use the footage at all.
But...and this is my real beef with the whole problem of over-zealous copyright--such over-expansive interpretations of EXCLUSIVITY vs. FAIR USE, is that disrupting the balance between private ownership (the grant of copyright) and the public good (the purpose of copyright, written into the US General Statutes) leads precisely to the point where OWNERS can assert COPYRIGHT as a MEANS OF CENSORSHIP.
And not just censorship of things happening in the here-and-now. The term of copyright was set by the founders set as 7+7 years, and then 14+14 years, but has since been expanded time and again until the present day, in which case it is virtually perpetual. Which means future generations will never be able to comment or critique such media as has become prevalent in society because all "use" of that media is presumed commercial and proprietary to the owners.
And so I take the side that copyright assertion can and has been used as a cynical tool of censorship. I don't have any opinion about the Michael Moore movie (which, frankly, I don't care to watch). But I have very strong opinions that bogus claims of copyright have been and will be asserted specifically to censor media that is well within normal fair use doctrine, before the takeover of the corporate kelptocracy.
Originally Posted by Scot Yount
