Mike Godwin wrote:
Then I think the obvious next question is, how much money (in dollars or Euros) should we be willing to allocate every year to the defense of cases we believe we will likely win? Or, to put it another way, how much of our budget (in percentages) should we be willing to allocate every year to the defense of cases we believe we will win?
Is there any evidence that a large amount of money would be necessary? Is there a large and increasing number of suits or something that necessitates we do something to reduce the number of cases we have to defend? Or is this purely a hypothetical?
Unless I'm missing some recent change, historically copyright holders have been very wary of pressing lawsuits against educational and non-profit entities in cases where fair use might be a plausible defense, for fear of losing the case and establishing a strong pro-fair-use precedent. If anything, many academic journal and university press administrators are of the opinion that they could/should be significantly more bold in claiming fair use than they are currently.[1]
-Mark
[1] See, e.g.: http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/cni-copyright/msg06352.html and http://www.psupress.org/news/news_NACUA.html