Harvard prof tells judge that P2P filesharing is "fair use"

[John Dishon]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/harvard-prof-tells-...

It's a pretty ballsy position. For sure this will be a case to keep an eye on if you're interested in the future of intellectual property rights.

From the article: "Should Nesson win, he will essentially legalize the sharing of all digital goods, copyrighted or not, by noncommercial users."

[Dana King]

I think writers as a group are sometimes too sensitive about such issues, but this one is chiling. It seems like common sense that fair use would not apply, but juries are strange things sometimes. I don't think a jury decision is binding on anyone else; they'd have to win the inevitable appeal for it to have force of law, and that seems even less likely.

[Pepper Smith]

I suspect that if he should win, there would be a sudden dearth of new intellectually property available. Why put yourself through what a writer goes through to bring a story to birth if you're going to get nothing out of it? Or what a musician goes through, either.