Fair Use Rules

Fair use products, which can be used freely without worrying too much about copyright holders, have eclipsed copyrighted material.

Fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws account for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

“Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner,” CCIA president and CEO Ed Black said in a statement. “To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our country.”

By one measure—“value added,” which the report defines as “an industry’s gross output minus its purchased intermediate inputs”—the fair use economy is greater than the copyright economy.

Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion, said Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion.

The fair use economy’s “value added” is thus almost 70% larger than that of the copyright industries.

In this age of YouTube, remixing and cut and paste, none of this should surprise anyone. The question is, can creative people still make money making their work freely available. I think they can. But the details are still bei8ng worked out.

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