Papers, please
Wow, Gilmore went through with it!
Support Bloggers' Rights!
I listened to "Juniper" again, and I want to say that the lyric is "in which skeleton ladies like skeletons go" rather than "with skeleton ladies like skeletons go" (as previously reported).
Why is digital rights management in tension with fair use? Partly because it threatens to freeze fair use in 1996 and kill off, in advance, innovative new fair uses which were unknown in the past. Fred von Lohmann explains. And here are some vivid observations:
Were it not for the fair use doctrine, each of the following activities would be infringing:
- whistling a tune while walking down the street (public performance)
- cutting out a New Yorker cartoon and posting it on your office door (public display)
- photocopying a newspaper article for your files (reproduction)
- quoting a line from The Simpsons in an email to a coworker
- reverse engineering of computer code (reproduction)
- time-shifting" a radio or television program (reproduction)
- playing an excerpt of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" in a copyright law course (public performance)
- quoting from a novel in a review (reproduction)
(Those aren't really part of the argument, they're just nice observations.)
I got a lot of exercise today as I rode my bike (with two flat tires!) over Potrero Hill to see Annalee, then back over Potrero Hill to EFF, and subsequently off to see Katy. (Katy used to live in the inner Sunset, so if I'd ever made a bike trip to her old place, I could have ridden off into the Sunset.)
Annalee gave me a bunch of good books. These were review copies, so in addition to cheering for Annalee, we ought to cheer for first sale.
Contact: Seth David Schoen