[FC-discuss] UK Fair Use?

[Rob Myers]

Ringo Kamens wrote:
> So should I completely remove the fair use section? I think that even
> though it isn't backed by legal ground in the UK, it is important to
> mention that DRM takes away user rights. Should I just remove fair use
> and say owner's rights or something like that?
> Comrade Ringo Kamens

In this context the "owner" is the rights holder, who is the person 
adding the DRM. The user or consumer, the audience, doesn't have many 
rights in UK law to limit.

What we are meant to have is a public service broadcaster that takes our 
licence fee and uses it to provide us with world-class television 
programmes in ways that are of value to us. If that public service 
broadcaster is more interested in sucking up to Microsoft or not 
frightening other "content providers", none of whom have the same 
charter as the BBC, then it is betraying its public and failing to 
create public value.

There's two ways of putting this argument to the BBC that I can think of.

The first is to argue that the BBC has always been a leader in new ways 
of providing value to the public: television, teletext, video, CD-ROM, 
the internet. At no point before has it seen fit to sell out its public 
to special interest groups such as Microsoft. This is an appeal to fair 
play rather than Fair Use. ;-)

The second is to keep the Fair Use argument by pointing out that BBC 
television broadcasts are subject to the Fair Dealing right of time 
shifting, which in the US would be Fair Use, and to point out how DRM 
prevents this general principle from being applied to online content. 
Not to mention how it will depress viewing figures.

The big problem for UK TV channels is that lots of their programs are 
made by small but very vocal independent production houses (the trend to 
outsourcing here is the opposite of the US trend to making more and more 
programmes in-house). I wouldn't be surprised if these have had a quiet 
word with the BBC, and the BBC can ill afford to annoy them.

Thank you for doing this letter, it's great.

- Rob.