I am a very literal person, so much at times that my parents once suggested I go into International Copyright Law (tempting as I love reading about the WTO, but uhm…. no). Still with my thoughts straying into odd areas and how to get out of trouble (usually about something minor I have said or done) I sometimes jump onto topics such as this one about a potential way to use and abuse fair use to legally send out movies via bit torrent or p2p networks.

Now, I want to quickly clarify that I am not and expert in law much less copyright laws, DRM, or other annoying RIAA/MPAA legalities. Also, feel free to read up about how variable the ground is with the legal definition of fair use over at Wikipedia and the four fair use factors (courtesy of the University of Texas System) one should consider:

 There is no simple test to determine what is fair use. Section 107 of the Copyright Act*** sets forth the four fair use factors which should be considered in each instance, based on particular facts of a given case, to determine whether a use is a “fair use”: (1) the purpose and character of use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes, (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

More to the point of this entry is set around the following 30 second usage of music, lyrics, or music videos (courtesy of UTS again):

Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work (or in the aggregate of extracts from an individual work), whether the musical work is embodied in copies, or audio or audiovisual works, may be reproduced or otherwise incorporated as a part of a multimedia project created under Section 2. Any alterations to a musical work shall not change the basic melody or the fundamental character of the work.

So, here’s the first legality question: What prevents a non-profit company for educational purposes pulling together all sorts of videos onto their system, using a program to split out a full 2 hour movie into 30 second “fair use” clips for students to download and discuss (eg: assignment is to choose any 30 second clip and write some monologue about that)?

If such a system can be created legally, then essentially a system similar to the old Napster could be created to store all these fair use videos for educational purposes. And once that’s set up all that is needed is for some computer software genius to create the software that can sort, merge, and produce a flawless movie back together again (that would be the “for-profit” side that is of course legally separated from the non-profit company). Granted, the software program could be declared illegal (remember the eBook hack presentation and subsequent arrest? Or the PDF hack?), but once out that program would be quite hard to stop from spreading around the web regardless.

In any case, that is just food for thought and if anyone does carrying this out (assuming it’s a legel loophole), an appreciative kudos would be welcome.