On 8/6/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Michael Turley wrote:
Their choice of what articles to include is a very significant part of
their
content.
How do you measure "significant"? If their articles average 1,000 words each we're talking about less than 1/10 of 1 percent.
It doesn't take much court watching to know that "significant" is not decided by percentage. If you were to print and give away individual still frames from a copyright movie, you'd be using an even lower percentage of the work, yet you'd still lose a copyright infringement action. Disney does quite good business selling individual stills from their movies. I don't remember but they may have started doing so after successfully suing someone else for doing it.
I don't think "significant" is something you can measure objectively. You have to look at each case, the creativity involved in making the work, and the specific purpose that the fair use claimant uses it under.
In this case, the fact that the other party is competing in the same product market, and that we're using their work to improve our competing product means we have to be even more cautious.
As you say, the courts don't try to restrict competition, but they do frown on people trying to compete with a copyright holder by using the copyright holder's own work. That is the very purpose of copyright.
I think the founders were right in granting limited copyright terms, but if you think the current courts favor competition over copyright, please review the consititutionality review of the recent copyright extension laws. "Competition" and "common good" are not high on the current court system's list of goals.