Point me to the hard and fast rules within that statute, though, Trudy. Fair use laws are vague, and deliberately so. The so-called "rules" that "everyone knows" (parody, news-for-news, etc), are gentlemen's agreements, not law.

They are not codified in the statute, but this is a common law country, and precedent controls. It's not so much deliberately vague as simply case-dependent, and parody, news for news and the like are well established in the case law. You're right that the 10s thing is bullshit, but it's not the case that there's no room for case precedent in determining what's fair use.

Top Chef:

I loved both challenges, especially the idea of calorie restriction. I was actually kind of surprised that the meals came in under 500 calories myself--it didn't seem like the portions were that small. I thought the combos seemed pretty crazy though (lasagna and chicken?).

Also, I agree that Sam should've have spoken up earlier (did they learn nothing from the lychee incident?), but especially should have named names on the olive oil after Mia called out Betty.

(And I am a complete nerd, but I also do this for a living. Explaining fair use to clients with stupid entertainment lawyers who tell them they should be getting everything for free because [insert fair use urban legend here] is easily the most annoying part of my job.)

Ha! I'm also a complete nerd, and I get exactly the same annoying clients, only mine bought the urban myth about how any educational use is fair use.

(Not surprisingly, I was just about to say the same thing about deliberately vague guidelines, no hard-and-fast anything, no specific number of seconds or pages or whatev.)

Okay, no definitive news on my thing, but possibilities are still open. Now Monday is the day.

I hate waiting.

I am a third complete nerd, who is attending a meeting tomorrow about whether librarians are allowed to print out copies for students who can't get into their e-reserves without first checking with the registrar to see if they are registered in the class! 'Cause the evil evil piracy of articles on post-communist Russia by undergraduates is ruining the country, I tells ya.

Also relating Top Chef, I would love to see the word amuse-bouche eliminated from restaurant lexicon. It is not an expression the French use and it sounds ridiculous.

Point me to the hard and fast rules within that statute, though, Trudy. Fair use laws are vague, and deliberately so. The so-called "rules" that "everyone knows" (parody, news-for-news, etc), are gentlemen's agreements, not law.

It's not hard and fast rules, its guidelines used to determine a judgment. Fair use IS determined on an case-by-case basis, but the determination is based on statute .

It's not so much "gentleman's agreement" as it is "precedent" . The statute IS worded vaguely, and like any vaguely worded statue, case-law in significant in determining how it is applied.

'Cause the evil evil piracy of articles on post-communist Russia by undergraduates is ruining the country, I tells ya.

adds flea to list of those perpetrating the post - Communist ideals.

Fourth nerd. I'm the sort under whose rubric permission is being requested when it's decided that fair use does not apply, and partly helping to decide what is and what isn't fair use.

My company gave me ground rules for excerpt size (since we're a for-profit company, most of the rest of the allowance criteria don't vary), but other companies I've worked for gave me different ground rules. Everybody agrees that there are ground rules, however, so if George Lucas tried to sue my company over 1 line of reprinted dialogue, he'd probably get laughed out of court.

Count me as another nerd, because we've had writers fired for lifting chunks of legal texts wholecloth and putting them into their own articles/books that we end up publishing and getting sued over from the original authors, so all of this copyright law info is fascinating to me!