Posts Tagged: "Peter Jaszi"

Fair Use in the Digital Age: Reflections on the Fair Use Doctrine in Copyright Law

Judge Leval found fair use and ruled in favor of the defendants. However, this was quickly reversed and remanded by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals under the logic that that previously unpublished works were immune from fair use due to a right of privacy. Leval now thinks his opinion deserved to be reversed, but the Court of Appeal’s opinion was even more problematic. He opined that the “[i]nability to quote from unpublished documents would seriously impair history, political commentary, [and] journalism.” As he described Craft v. Kobler (1987), New Era Publications v. Henry Holt & Co. (1988), and American Geophysical Union v. Texaco (1992), a pattern became clear: Judge Leval’s application of the fair use doctrine throughout the past thirty years has been based on furthering the advancement and edification of the public.