A Different Stripe

The right to write

Publishers Weekly reports today on the Right to Write, a group organized around issues of fair use—a matter on which much too little is known by the general population (and which is in danger of disappearing). It has some heavy-hitters backing it up:

"Among the groups supporting Right to Write are Stanford University Law School’s Fair Use Project and Harvard Law School’s Citizen Media Law Projects. 'We are seeing far too many important works being scuttled because of baseless legal threats directed at creative artist by copyright holders who object to the use or criticism of their work,' said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School."

So far, the site seems to be in an embryonic stage, but you can sign up for their newsletter to stay updated as it develops.

More:
A judge holds up the concept of  fair use (in the case of Universal Music requesting that a home-movie of a toddler with Prince singing faintly in the background).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Fairly used

Alasdair Gray is perhaps not as well known in the US as he should be, though not for lack of Gavin Grant's trying, nor, for that matter his own enlightened beliefs about disseminating excerpts of his work:

About authors' property rights I am a Socialist who thinks nobody should pay for quoting less than 200 words. Nearly everyone who wants to use my illustrations and words — sometimes whole stories — is allowed to have them free if they are not a financially successful publishing firm. I think it a pity that the law has extended dead authors' copyrights from 50 to 70 years. I thought of adding a clause to my will making the copyrights of my books free for all, but my wife is much younger than me and depends on my income, so I did not do it. [link to the post from which this is taken]

We frequently receive requests for permission to quote from books we publish—often in non-commercial publications or scholarly works. Since we do not control such reproduction rights, we cannot deny or grant permission. Instead I sometimes try to sketch out a brief description of the doctrine of fair use: a doctrine that seems to be in danger of dying out from disuse.   It's not something made up by Lawrence Lessig and his pals at Stanford, you can read about it at the US Copyright Office. The University of Texas site also includes a helpful discussion.