Re: Fair Use litigatable?

On Thu, 25 May 2000, Bernard Rous <rous[_at_]hq.acm.org> asked:
>
> Don't all the uses of a work that are considered fair assume that
> the work has first been legally acquired?

Not at all. If you write a book and I quote selected passages in my review of the book, that's one example of fair use of your material. It doesn't imply an acquisition of your work by me!

But maybe you don't mean acquisition of the work; maybe you mean acquisition of *that copy.* If you're asking whether it can be inferred that the review copy of the book, or the galleys, came into my hands legitimately: While they probably did, the answer is no; the fact of my fair-use citation says nothing about how I got a copy of the text.

--Dodi Schultz
  <schultz[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Fri May 26 2000 - 16:06:25 GMT