I believe Fair Use *is* in fact in the copyright statute. The problems: it's a subjective call due to the weighing of factors necessary (and if those factors were replaced by a specific and stringent test it would probably NOT be a good thing - I doubt the "transformative" clause would survive, and it is absolutely key), and unless they can persuade the EFF or the ACLU you to help, the independent artist or media maker is up against corporate-funded take-no-prisoners legal teams when it comes to proviing their case.
I wish the law could be more specific, but what I'd want to see would never pass: a law that frames the issues solely as fraud and piracy, of whether or not the use deprived the copyright owner of sales or rentals by making the public think the copy was the actual item or by explicitly pirating the work as is. Period. The point of copyright should be to prevent false claims of authorship and to prevent outright fraud, and that should be IT. That's what it was for to begin with. Crabbily pre-coffee, Brook _______________________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
