Google and Microsoft Help To Defend Fair Use

An anonymous reader writes "The Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a complaint this month with the FTC 'alleging that professional sports leagues, Hollywood studios, and book publishers were all using copyright notices that misrepresented the law'. That is, they were aggressively pursuing 'right' that they were not entitled to. Now a group, backed by companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun, and Red Hat, has launched a web site called Defend Fair Use that shows they are serious about making the complaint stick. From the article: 'In contrast to copyright notices that take no account of fair use and claim control over "all accounts and descriptions" of a game, the CCIA offers a different copyright notice of its own. "We recognize that copyright law guarantees that you, as a member of the public, have certain legal rights," it says, "You may copy, distribute, prepare derivative works, reproduce, introduce into an electronic retrieval system, perform, and transmit portions of this publication provided that such use constitutes 'fair use' under copyright law, or is otherwise permitted by applicable law."'"

Of course....

[i.r.id10t]

Of course, at least one of those companies is selling/making money from systems that won't allow you to exercise your fair use rights...

Re:We can only hope

[digitalaudiorock]

Could this be a reversal of Microsoft's prior stance on DRM, wherein they fellated the movie and music industries despite the consumer electronics industry being far larger and far more consumer-friendly?

Nah.

Speaking of DRM and the like...I'd be interested in hearing the official CCIA position on the consumers right to backup CDs and DVDs, especially given that the DMCA frequently seems void fair use in that case. It'd be really disappointing if their position was in support of fair use only when it doesn't violate the letter of the DCMA. That would be pretty hollow at best.

Take a look before you get too impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone actually looked at the website [defendfairuse.org]?

There's a link labelled "Tell us what you think" about fair use, overreaching copyright notices - but when you click it, the only option is to sign their pre-drafted petition. There's no way to actually convey your views. Much what you'd expect from these companies, really.

Then try reading the petition itself. Some idiot has failed to specify a proper charset for the web page, so it's peppered with weird characters.

Freakin' amateurs.