Determining Fair Use

I wanted to suggest a book I recently read that might help with this whole issue of determining whether something is in the public domain. It's "Technology and Copyright Law" by Arlene Bielefield and Lawrence Cheeseman (ISBN 1-55570-267-8) published by Neal-Schuman, and I recommend it highly. In it, the authors explain how to practice what they call "defensive law" (i.e., preventing problems before they happen).

I found the book to be very easy to understand; it certainly helped me to feel more confident about an intimidating subject. Although its focus is on new technology and its implications on copyright, there is also plenty of information on the history of the law that we still need to be familiar with. There are sections which clearly explain the "letter of the law" analyzing hard-to-understand legal-ese. And there are lots of examples of actual cases. The checklists are particularly helpful; for instance, there's a checklist that helps you to determine very simply if a work is in the "public domain." There's discussion of such topics as classroom use of off-air videotapes, electronic library reserves, and the use of various media in distance learning.

Hope this book helps all of you who are dealing with thorny and irksome copyright issues to avoid the expense of lawsuits that none of us in the non-profit sector have the time or money for.

By the way, Neal-Schuman now has a Web site http://www.neal-schuman.com where you can search a "virtual catalog" and even order book online.

Arlene Quaratiello
<arqinfo[_at_]shore.net> Received on Thu Jul 17 1997 - 21:53:33 GMT