How Do Online Copyright and Fair Use Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,239 words · ~6 min read
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when the world's first copyright law was passed in
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1710 I can't even imagine that the British Parliament would have ever
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envisioned people flinging pirated copies of movies all over the Internet
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whatever that would have seemed like thousands of times every day yet that's
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exactly what eventually happened and seeing as many of our copyright laws
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were meant for the preyers space era the
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way the copyright Works online is often
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quite messy now we hear at Techquickie aren't lawyers uh that's not entirely
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true John our writer did graduate from an American law school but anyways we
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can help clear up some of the misconceptions around what you can and
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can't do online at least legally anyways
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although today's episode is based around us copyright law similar Concepts exist
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in many other countries as well so one of the main reasons that copyright laws
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even exist is to encourage people like musicians software developers and game
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designers to come up with creative stuff
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I mean do you think that Mark Wahlberg would have starred in that awful movie
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The Happening if there wasn't a copyright holder there to cut him a fat
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paycheck so perhaps it isn't surprising
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that usually when you hear a news story about a high-profile copyright case it's
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where some copyright infringer either made tons of money off of bootlegging
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copies of something or where some big shot movie studio comes after someone
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for cutting into their profits by Distributing one of their films for free
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even if the infringer isn't making any money but let's assume that like most
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people you aren't running a huge bootleg operation and are concerned about
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whether you can do something like share a screenshot from a movie on your blog
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or play a song in the background of a Youtube upload this is where fair use
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comes into play and a really important concept that's misunderstood by a lot of
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people in a nutshell most kinds of creative work including songs books and
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the angsty poems that you wrote when you were a 16-year-old scene kid have an
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automatic copyright that applies as soon
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as they're created but that doesn't mean no one else can ever use them fair use
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helps keep people from getting sued for copyright infringement as long as
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they're using stuff well fairly but what
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constitutes Fair that's a pretty subjective question that courts use
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several factors to answer but generally speaking the most important one is
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whether you're costing someone money by how you're using their stuff even though
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any reproduction without permission of a
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copyrighted work is technically
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infringement even if you're just reposting some cool picture you found as
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your Facebook cover photo that being said if one day you get a nasty letter
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from someone's lawyer you can probably
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assert fair use if you're you're not affecting someone's bottom line on the
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other hand simply posting something with a disclaimer that the content isn't
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yours doesn't automatically make it fair use if you're seeding a torrent of a
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copyrighted song fair use will not save you from the wrath of a recording studio
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even if you say this isn't mine I'm not
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making money off of it since people are just going to download the song anyways
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for free instead of paying for it on iTunes or wherever else the company will
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see it as they hit to their bottom line whether or not that person would have
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bought the song at all or not this concept also comes to play if you've
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ever spent any time reading or writing fanfiction it's pretty popular for a
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fanfic writer to put a disclaimer at the top claiming that they they don't own
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the characters but since copyright law also gives the right to make derivative
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Works to the original creator for example a movie book or game sequel It's
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theoretically possible for fanfic writers to get in trouble with
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Publishers though many authors notably JK Rowling of Harry Potter Fame have
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given their blessing to fanfic writers so long as they're not trying to sell
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their stories and of course content creators are under no obligation to let
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people use their stuff even if they aren't making money off of it but at
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least the way we think about laws in an age where anything can be uploaded in a
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matter of seconds seemingly they're catching up to reality even if the
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process is a bit slow one appeals court in the US recently ruled that fair use
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should not just be a legal excuse for
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infringement but instead a right that shouldn't constitute infringement at all
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after Universal issued a takedown notice after a woman uploaded a 30-second clip
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of her kids dancing to a print song meaning it may be the case soon where
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major companies have to actually think before just flagging everything they can
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we've also seen the proliferation of sites that use things like Creative
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Commons licenses to allow for free reuse
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of lots of different types of content Wikipedia is a good example of this and
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we've also seen the end of heavy-handed lawsuits from entertainment industry
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associations against people who shared one or two songs often unwittingly but
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even though the powers that be seem to be trying to make it a bit easier for
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folks who really aren't intentionally doing anything wrong do be careful about
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what you share or host online and remember not to buy Game of Thrones
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episodes on USB sticks from that dude that hangs out in the alley behind
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Arby's it's just it's just not safe
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going to freshbooks.com Techquickie and entering Techquickie
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