On 10/21/97, Glen (McKay) Gummess <gmckay[_at_]nmjc.cc.nm.us> wrote:
>
> It seems to me that the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia
> are an excellent model for achieving a "safe harbor" for a given
> practice (i.e., using copyrighted works in hypermedia for education).
> Why not apply that model to reserve collections?
To quote Grace Hopper, ships in the harbor are "safe," but that is not what ships are for. Nor is it what fair use is for.
The "safe" thing to do, of course, is to always hunt down the copyright holder and get a license on whatever terms he or she dictates. Your suggestion of deferring to the the stated preferences of content producers -- and I emphasize that this is *all* that the so-called "Fair Use Guidelines" are -- is perhaps the next best thing.
The "safe" response to possible adverse results in exercising your rights is always to give your rights away.
But fair use is designed to permit the flexibility and experimentation that is critical to a free society, and it would be rather a pity if the public in general -- and educators in particular -- threw that away in order to remain "safe."
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