Commentors and fair use

Thanks to Jyoti one of my blog commentors I found myself listening to this video on The Tube. Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes especially in the way he is fighting for sense in the copyright debates at the moment.

The video seeks to explain why the Publishers Guild v Google fight to stop Google digitising the worlds books is such a bad thing . The Publisher Guild are trying to emulate the BeamIt example where the music industry forced it to close down and paying $110m damages. Lessig sees hope in the Kelly v Arriba case which allowed linking by way of thumbnail images as an example of fair use.

To me its seems crazy that anyone should prevent the digitisation of out of print books. Where there is no way of contacting the author or original publisher, which represent over 50% of the books Google were going to do. These associations (and don't get me started on the RIAA) are really modern day Luddites, except governments seem to pander their whims, even when it is clearly to the detriment of the electors.

An excellent video if you have 30mins to spare and a really smart way of giving a lecture allowing you to hear the speaker and see their slides.