Re: Copyright & The New World Economic Order

On 7/21/99, Steven D. Jamar <sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu> wrote:
>
> Another problem with the request is that you are asking language do to
> something it really cannot do - eliminate ambiguity and vagueness and
> open-endedness.
>
> The Old Testament says "Thou shalt not kill." But it also requires
> stoning to death. How does one square these two instructions? It
> is ok under US law to kill someone in self defense. So even the
> most certain of laws carries with it ambiguity, exceptions,
> limitations.

I believe that your point about the inherent ambiguity of language and the uncertainty involved in human endeavors makes a good point on why fair use is necessarily fluid.

As to to your Biblical analogy, your question might be rhetorical, but there is an answer. Biblical scholars for whom the Pentateuch is the written Torah or Tanakh rather than the "Old" Testament (i.e. Jewish scholars) would answer that the problem you pose is one of translation. The commandment rendered into English from Hebrew as "Thou shalt not kill" is better translated "Thou shalt not murder." Lawyers and others on this list understand the distinction between homicide and murder. Murder, of course, involves a certain state of mind, and there is a certain murkiness in making the judgment of whether that state of mind existed and whether certain affirmative defenses would apply.

Which brings us right back to the difficulty in pinning down what is fair use.

M.

S. Martin Keleti
<keleti[_at_]manifesto.com> Received on Thu Jul 22 1999 - 17:55:26 GMT