Q & A
Each month, MusicBizAdvice.com answers your questions about the music industry.
Fair Use
and File Sharing
Q.
Nowhere in your
article, The RIAA Music
Downloading Controversy: Both Sides of the Record did you cover the
concept of 'Fair Use'. Why not?—J.W.
A.
You pose an excellent
question. The reason Darcie Wicknick, who wrote the article, did not cover
Fair Use is twofold:
-
Although they’re
commonly confused, “Fair Use” and file sharing are not the same thing,
so it didn’t belong it the article.
“Fair Use” allows small portions of copyrighted material
to be quoted in critical or educational discussion
without paying the copyright holder and specifically states that copying
“significant portions” isn’t allowed. Therefore, under the
traditionally-accepted interpretation of copyright laws, downloading a
song from a website without permission of the copyright holder doesn’t
really meet the definition of “Fair Use.”
-
When the article
was written in 2004, it was a distinct possibility that Fair Use
rules would change and render any Fair Use information in
our article obsolete, so I made the editorial decision not to include
specific information about Fair Use until there was some sort
of concrete decision or compromise. It was a tough call, but I felt
including potentially out-of-date information about an already complex
subject would be more of a disservice to our readers than not including
it.
As it turned out, with only a few exceptions, the traditional
interpretation of copyright law has stood the test of time (now the
focus is back to how the copyright holders get paid, not
whether they should), so there was no need to go back and put it in
the article.
Thanks for the question!
Randi Reed
Editor-in-Chief / Founder
MusicBizAdvice.com
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