[Foundation-l] Litigation costs

[Delirium]

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