Fair Use – Recalibrating the balance in Fair Dealing
This is a call to arms; or at least, a call for legislation which would radically recast EU copyright law.
Intellectual property law and policy are all about innovation, both encouraging it and protecting its fruits. But these are potentially opposing, perhaps even incompatible, goals: if we reward one innovator with a monopoly over the fruits of the innovation, prohibiting others’ use of those fruits, then we risk preventing the next round of innovation. The challenge to law-makers is to strike the an appropriate balance between reward and innovation, by pitching the length of the monopoly at the right level, both in the breadth of its coverage and the length of its term, beyond which others might also use it.
The story of copyright provides a good example of this dilemma. …