Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

Timothy Phillips <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> wrote:
>
> Patterson and Lindberg formulate the following rule of personal use:
>
> An individual's use of a copyrighted work for his or her own
> private use is a personal use, not subject to fair-use re-
> straints. Such use includes use by copying, provided that the
> copy is neither for public distribution or sale to others nor
> a functional substitute for a copyrighted work currently
> available on the market at a reasonable price. (L. Ray Patterson
> and Stanley W. Lindberg, _The Nature of Copyright: A Law of
> User's Rights_, U. Georgia Press, Athens, 1991.)

Does this formulation have any legal backing in the US (in the form of statute or judicial opinion) or is it merely the wishful thinking of those who formulated it? The suggestion that there might be another class of permitted use (private use) going beyond fair use does not seem right to me from this side of the Atlantic.

The "Private use" exception is a doctrine of some continental jurisdictions, for example Germany, where there is no fair use or fair dealing provision. And private use is in any case subject to the payment of equitable remuneration to the copyright holder, which in Germany is exacted by way of a system of levies distributed to rightsholders through a collecting society.

-- 
Edward Barrow
edward[_at_]plato32.demon.co.uk