Congressman Vows to Fight for Fair Use

“A U.S. lawmaker today warned of attempts to roll back a
provision in copyright law that has become a cornerstone of posting
and sharing content on the Internet, pledging to fight to preserve
the doctrine of fair use in the face of an array of challenges.

“”For over a decade, fair use has been under attack,
specifically by large media companies,” Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn)
said today in a keynote address at an event hosted by the digital
rights group Public Knowledge, and co-sponsored by Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG), an ardent proponent of progressive Internet copyright
policies.

“Fair use, the provision in copyright law that allows the
unauthorized reproduction of snippets of copyrighted material, has
a broad impact on the way people find and retrieve content on the
Web.

“Search results, for instance, typically display an excerpt of
the material on the destination page alongside the link. Similarly,
the emergent genre of music and video mashups, which sample and
repurpose other artists’ work in a new format, finds its legal
underpinning in the doctrine of fair use.”

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