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University of Michigan Law School

2007

Legislation

Fair use

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Protecting Fair Use With Fogerty: Toward A New Dual Standard, John A. Fonstad May 2007

Protecting Fair Use With Fogerty: Toward A New Dual Standard, John A. Fonstad

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Copyright law exists to promote the progress of art and science. It achieves this by balancing limited grants of rights to authors against public access to works. However, copyright holders have upset this balance and tilted the law in their favor One cause of this phenomenon is that the benefit of public access to works is diffused throughout the entire public while the benefit of rights in works is concentrated in the copyright holder. This problem is especially prevalent in the context of litigation where copyright holders (plaintiffs) often stand to gain more through victory than copyright users (defendants). As …


Lawful Personal Use, Jessica D. Litman Jan 2007

Lawful Personal Use, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

Despite having sued more than 20,000 of its customers,2 the recording industry wants the world to know that it has no complaint with personal use. Copyright lawyers of all stripes agree that copyright includes a free zone in which individuals may make personal use of copyrighted works without legal liability.3 Unlike other nations, though, the United States hasn't drawn the borders of its lawful personal use zone by statute.4 Determining the circumstances under which personal use of copyrighted works will be deemed lawful is essentially a matter of inference and analogy, and differently striped copyright lawyers will differ vehemently on …