Introduction and overview

✍ Scribed by Crews, Kenneth D.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 38 KB
• Volume: 50
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(1999)50:14<1304::aid-asi6>3.0.co;2-8

✦ Synopsis

That event was one of a series of Town Meetings convened around the country to discuss the development of "fair-use guidelines" by the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU). The first essay by examines the foundation of fair-use law and early fair-use guidelines. It also explores the origins of the Conference on Fair Use, and the call to build on the past with an understanding of fair use for newer technologies.

At the time of the Town Meeting, in April 1997, the direction of CONFU was taking clear shape, and the participants understood well the nature of the forthcoming guidelines that would appear in a CONFU report later that year (CONFU, 1997). Indeed, events had become sufficiently crystallized that the "final" CONFU Report (CONFU, 1998) includes guidelines that differ little from the proposed guidelines that were debated in early 1997.

The need for debate about the meaning of fair use and the appropriateness of fair-use guidelines was vividly clear at the Town Meeting, and is demonstrated repeatedly in this collection of essays. open the debate with opposing views about the appropriateness of guidelines in general, and the CONFU guidelines in particular. Levering urges the academic community to experiment with the guidelines and give them a chance, rather than rejecting them before implementation. Frazier makes clear that he does not oppose all possible guidelines, but he articulates serious concerns about the interpretations of fair use that emerged from the CONFU process.