"Will Fair Use Survive?"

Today the Free Expression Policy Project at NYU's School of Law released "Will Fair Use Survive?"  This report, by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, addresses whether increasingly heavy assertions of control by copyright and trademark owners smothering fair use and free expression.   The report incorporates data from the Berkman-hosted Chilling Effects project, which is led by fellows Wendy Seltzer and Diane Cabell.

Key report findings, as listed on the FEPP website:
*Artists, writers, historians, and filmmakers are burdened by a "clearance culture" that ignores fair use and forces them to seek permission (which may be denied) and pay high license fees in order to use even small amounts of copyrighted or trademarked material.

*The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA) is being used by copyright owners to pressure Internet service providers to take down material from their servers on the mere assertion that it is infringing, with no legal judgment and no consideration of fair use.

*An analysis of 320 letters on the Chilling Effects website, an online repository of threatening cease and desist and "take down" letters, showed that nearly 50% of the letters had the potential to stifle protected speech.

Click here to read the report online: http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/WillFairUseSurvive.pdf

Also, please see Jen Urban and Laura Quilter's report on DMCA abuse: http://www.chillingeffects.org/weather.cgi?WeatherID=528. 
Through stories and numerical analysis, both of these reports show the chilling effects legal claims can have on online expression -- even and especially when the claims don't match the law.