Re: Haworth Press Journals

On Tue, 19 Apr 1994, Donald Berman wrote:
>
> I happen to believe that "fair use" is built into the nature of the
> beast - that the right to the benefits of copyright were given on
> conditions - and one of those conditions is fair use. Without getting
> into an extended discussion which we have had before on this list I
> don't think one can have a system of copyright without the right of
> fair use - some countries call it something else but they have a
> similar doctrine (though not quite as pervasive). In this country the
> absence of a fair use doctrine that could not be waived I believe would
> upset the delicate balance between the right of copyright and the First
> amendment. I find it difficult to justify a doctrine that would allow a
> publisher to sell a book on the condition that one could not quote from
> the book in a review unless the review was deemed favorable by the
> publisher of the book.

How do we reconcile this with the practice of CD-ROM software vendors who by contract make it unlawful to copy the non-copyrightable portions of the text they are incorporating, except for limited purposes. It is quite prevalent in the legal CD-ROM field, where the text of court opinions or state statutes that are not themselves copyrightable are indexed (but not modified) with a copyrighted software, and the contract permitting use of the (properly protectable) software prohibits copying of the unmodified non-copyrightable data.

I know of only one CD-ROM that doesn't overreach the copyright, that of the U.S. Code published by the GPO. The license makes no copyright claim to the data, and only covers the search software included on the disk.

Jeff Jernegan
<jernegan[_at_]hebron.connected.com> Received on Thu Apr 21 1994 - 04:54:14 GMT