Media giants start whisper campaign to kill Fair Use – Boing Boing

William Patry, the Google lawyer who formerly worked for the US Register of Copyrights, has a blog-post in which he outs a global anti-Fair-Use “whisper campaign” orchestrated by the big entertainment companies. The big media companies are trying to convince the world’s governments that the USA’s statutory exceptions to copyright (embodied in Fair Use) are so broad that they violate the centuries-old Berne Convention, a widely adopted copyright treaty. Berne is extremely rigid, and what’s more, it’s nearly impossible to update, since any amendments to it require signatures from all the governments that have signed it since the 1800s. Further, accession to Berne is a condition of many other trade agreements, so many countries are required to adopt Berne laws.

If the entertainment giants can convince the world’s governments that Fair Use violates Berne, it might mean that the US will be forced by a trade court to eliminate it in favor of something far more restrictive.

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