Solveig Singleton

Fair Use in Filtering

Bill Rosenblatt reports on EFF’s and other’s support for fair use in filtering. My take: A constructive step. It remains to be seen whether an objective “fair use” standard can be developed; and then again, whether it can be technologically implemented; if not, the answer will be a combination of process for “appeals” and simple licensing mechanisms.

In particular, this is a welcome departure from the “filtering is useless” stance. Certainly, filtering can be defeated. But ultimately something posted for public consumption must be in the clear. And not everyone will encrypt, especially if they are unaware that they are infringing. By and large, it ought to be possible to get copyright filtering for entire works to work at least as well as spam filtering–that is, not perfectly, but enough to get a handle on the problem.

November 6, 2007 | Comments |

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    >> By and large, it ought to be possible to get copyright filtering for entire works to work at least as well as spam filtering

    In spam filtering you have an adversarial relationship between the sender on one side and the recipient+carrier on the other side.

    With copyright filtering the sender and receiver are both on the same side, with the carrier being a (probably somewhat unenthusiastic) adversary trying to thwart the transmission. The real adversary is a rightsholder who really doesn't have a direct role in the transmission use case.

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