[stonith]

> Copyrighted works can be copied without the authors consent if it falls under fair use

"Fair Use" is a uniquely US concept and does not exist in copyright law elsewhere, so for any kind of global release this isn't correct.

> In particular, if we're having a conversation about copyright but we don't talk about scraping for search (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) or other aggregation services, then I'd ask why Google is allowed to aggregate information but everyone else isn't.

Author's Guild v Google is probably the closest we have to a tried case, but Fair Use rulings are both limited to the US and specific in their nature, so I'd be wary of generalising one domain (text) to another (images). Eg. Fair use takes into account harm, and the potential harm to human artists is nontrivial.

> Also, to not talk about the over reach of copyright, the nearly 100+ year copyright terms and the level of automation to demonitize and bully smaller artists using copyrighted work fairly is negligent.

I agree with you - Copyright needs an overhaul and it's offensively lopsided in favor of the powerful as it currently stands.

[abetusk]

You're absolutely right.

This is why the Creative Commons organization created CC0 in the first place to get around the differing and/or vague implementations of "public domain" [0].

As the author is most likely American and talking about Americans, I think my critique still mostly holds but you're absolutely right that once we go internationally it gets much more complex.

I only know of the Berne Convention [1] but doing some superficial research, it looks like their "fair use" doctrines are overly vague [2].

[0] https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#What_is_CC0.3F

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_three-step_test