Fair use [LWN.net]

Fair use

Posted May 24, 2007 0:44 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to: Google, why not by man_ls
Parent article: A day at the Open Source Business Conference

> I can sing my own version of "My way" (my "my way", if you will)
> in the shower without violating any laws.

I am *certain* that this is covered by "fair use" in any reasonable
jurisdiction -- even where fair use does not formally exist :-)

Your neighbours may complain about noise pollution, but that's
a separate matter!

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Fair use

Posted May 24, 2007 6:23 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I don't think we have this "fair use" in Spanish law, although I'm certainly not a lawyer. The law regulates private performances:

The communication will not be considered public when it is performed in a strictly domestic scope which is not integrated or connected to a network of any kind.

So if I had a webcam in my shower (even if it is strictly private) a guy might show up and require payment.

Your neighbours may complain about noise pollution, but that's a separate matter!

Hey, I do what I can! :D

Fair use

Posted Jun 1, 2007 8:52 UTC (Fri) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

> Your neighbours may complain about noise pollution, but that's
> a separate matter!

It's not. Public performances are controlled by copyright. If you intentionally give a public performance (i.e. not in your shower, unless you put the video on YouTube), you need the copyright holder's agreement.

Putting a program for everybody's use on a web server is probably the equivalent of "public performance". The law possibly doesn't say anything about "public performance" of programs (because literally, this would mean "read the source code out aloud" or something like that), so it's not a well-defined legal term. Therefore, the Affero license goes through the "modification" clause. After all, if you run an unmodified program, the source is available, anyway.