We're now going to look at some other limitations on copyright. We've talked about fair use, that's the most important defense. We've talked about first sale, we've talked about performance rights, expired copyright, and goodwill, but there's more. Some of the things we're going to talk about that are more and more and more, are the right to use for promotions, the right to use for archive, and some special statutory limitations. What do I mean by statutory? Well, statutory means passed by Congress. Special means limited to a few types of users, and limitations is obvious. It's limitations on copyright, things that get you out of violating copyright because there's a limit on copyright protections. That might apply to companies like Google, or AOL, or to libraries, or universities, some specific limits on copyright in certain situations. And then there's more beyond that, so we'll talk a little bit about what's more. One question that comes up sometimes in classes when I'm teaching this is, I go into a a music store and I hear them playing music. Do they have to pay for the right to play those songs in a music store? Or is it legal to play the music for free? And the answer is it's legal because it's the right to use for promotions. And then you say, well, hm, that's good. Could I get that right by putting up a YouTube video of a song? And at the end of it saying, click here to buy on Amazon? No, because you're not in the business of selling albums or songs. If you were in the business of selling songs, if that is your business, and if you're not doing anything that harms that business or harms the providers, you could have a fair use defense. For example, you may be in the business of selling music. And for each of the songs where somebody could buy, you allow them to play a 15-second clip. In 15 seconds, they can say, I like that, or I don't like that. And they decide, I'm going to buy, or I'm not going to buy. But they don't listen to the whole song, you can't download the whole song. And you're not going to make a recording of 15 seconds of 500 songs and listen to 15 seconds of each, that's kind of dumb. Well, maybe you would, I wouldn't do it, most people wouldn't do it. And so that's good for promotion. So if you're really in the business of promoting some copyright work, then you can promote it with limited samples, or in limited context. What about playing music while you're doing a gameplay video? It's in the background, and it's just part of your gameplay experience. People do this a lot. Students say, is that legal? And the answer is no, it is not legal. That's easy, that's an easy case. If you go to court and you say, well, I should be allowed to do it. No, you're not allowed, there's no fair use. There's no first sale, there's nothing here. You gotta pay money for that right. But then you say, wait a minute, a lot of people are doing this, and they're not rich. They're probably not paying for every user for the copyright rights to use that as part of their gameplay video, so how do they defend? They have the best defense in the world against being sued. They're poor, they don't have any money. And there's no point in suing someone who has no money. You won't win anything. Even if you shut them down, so what? It just doesn't matter. Maybe you can get YouTube to take the video down, but there's just no point in suing them. So you don't sue poor people. You sue people with money because you want their money, and it's profitable to sue them, and you want to encourage them to behave better. But poor people have a pretty good defense against being sued. And so the best defense is just to be a tiny, poor company, or individual. But when you get rich, when you go public, when your games become big enough, now you may be worth suing. You may be a superstar, and some people playing games actually are making money off it. They're becoming the superstars of entertainment. And so that may get them sued. Can I back up software on my PC? Very common, we do backups, mainframes, personal computers, phones, etc. And the answer is, yes, the law allows archive of software. What about music, can I make a copy of music? The law does not allow archives of music. Now this is interesting, because if you back up your computer, you can back up all the software. You can't back up the music legally, or can you? Well, there's no archival right to archive music. The archival right only applies to software. But you might have a first sale defense. This comes [LAUGH] back to first sale. Remember, you always argue first sale. Personal use, convenience, location, and some judges have said, looks like first sale to me. I mean, not first sale, looks like fair use to me. Looks like a reasonable defense. So some judges have said, yeah, you buy a CD, you rip it, looks like a fair use. Other judges have said, no, that's not allowed. So remember fair use, you don't know. You don't know how the judge will rule. It depends on the judge, depends on the situation. What's happened is the studios have stopped suing for ripping of CDs because too many judges have ruled against them, and they don't want anymore rulings on that. So there's no more lawsuits on that principle, because they're starting to lose. So is there a fair use defense? It looks like it's getting stronger over time. Looks like you're more likely to have a fair use defense, but it's not a right of archival. Statutory limitations, these apply in certain situations, like a library. A library has the right to do an inter-library loan, to make a copy of an article, to send to another library, to fax things between libraries, to use Lexis / Nexis or other databases under license and with some permissions to do things in a creative way. These are library rights that are extended under copyright that are special limitations. Libraries can make copies in certain situations or do things with information in certain situations. Information providers on the Internet, ISPs or OSPs, which are Internet service providers, or online information providers are allowed to do certain things under copyright law. And particularly in the US, there's some very strong limitations on copyright against Internet providers. So Google was allowed to have virtual libraries of every work in the universe. Every work ever published Google has in their library, and that's a lot of copying that Google's done. And the courts have said, well, that's allowed. Not to sell those works, that's not allowed, but to use them to search and to find information is allowed. Some people say the fact that Google has these massive libraries is harming others and should not be allowed. European courts are a little more tough on Google. But US courts have allowed this as a statutory limitation, a right passed by Congress. Yahoo News, or Google News, another statutory right to report the news, well supported in the US. France, Germany, and Spain have said, no, you don't. You want to report the news, you pay us. So different interpretation of right in different countries. More and more, copyright law has lots of little limitations. Copyright law is 367 pages long. Most of that is exceptions. There are hundreds of examples of minor, little exceptions. There's no point in going through all of them, but you may run up against them as a copyright holder, or you may be able to take advantage of them. We don't have time in this video to go through many, many dozens of exceptions, maybe more than 100. But just know it's not as simple as it seems. Copyright law is very simple in essence. You create it, it's original, you record it, you own it. It's the exceptions that are complicated. Fair use is complicated, first sale is sometimes complicated, other things are complicated. And there's many, many exceptions. That's what you need to remember. You have copyright, it's easy, it's cheap, it's fast to get, but there are exceptions. That's it, thank you very much. We'll now move on to new topics on copyright. [MUSIC]
