A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.
Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.
Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers.
Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.
Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.
The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.
IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.
"industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned $4.5 trillion"
ReplyDeleteYour careful wording is correct. Nick Carr counters that the report is "silly" in purporting to show that "the fair use economy" is larger than the "copyright economy".
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/a_very_silly_re.php
Nick,
ReplyDeleteCarr certianly makes some valid points in his posting that I recommend readers visit, but I feel his comments defend the corporate and individual's rights under Fair Use. IWR is calling for information created by the government to be made usable under Fair Use.
Thanks for joining the debate.
Mark
ReplyDeleteYes, all in favour of fair use and freeing our data. It's just a pity the big number of the total value of all the industries listed is somewhat meaningless as a measure of the value of the "fair use economy". As Carr says you could also categorise all these industries as part of the "copyright economy" as well.
Nick