UW-Madison Libraries held a forum Saturday at Memorial Union about peer-to-peer file sharing, fair use and the difficulty of deciphering copyright laws.
Nelson Pavlosky, co-founder of the national Students for Free Culture, shared his personal experiences working with creativity and copyrights.
Pavlosky said the creative process repeats itself over time. After witnessing something inspirational, individuals create their own works.
Future generations then reference these works and continue to create, based off of the work of others before them.
“We do not create out of thin air,” Pavlosky said. “Rather what we have is a creative cycle.”
During his undergraduate career, Pavlosky sued Diebold, a company that manufactures electronic voting machines, for falsely claiming that he was infringing on their company’s copyrights.
Prior to the lawsuit, Pavlosky posted on his website internal memos that leaked from Diebold stating they had knowledge of problems with their equipment.
Pavlosky won his case, and used this experience to discuss the concept of fair use.
“Fair use is a use which you can make of a copyrighted work, even if you do not have the permission of the copyright holder,” he said.
Four different tests exist to determine whether fair use is applicable, Pavlosky said. These include the purpose of the use and its character, what type and the amount of copyrighted work used and what affect would be had upon the potential market.
“Copyright is good insofar as it encourages creativity, but it’s bad insofar as it inhibits creativity,” he said. “There’s a balance that has to be struck.”
According to Ron Kramer, UW-Madison’s chief information officer and vice provost for information technology, UW-Madison is considering extending their iTunes University site to the public as other universities have done.
However, Kramer said he is concerned with fair use and whether the university may infringe on copyrights if material is not used for educational purposes.
Eric Paulson, a UW-Madison graduate student, and Kramer lead a smaller discussion session to address the issues that peer-to-peer file sharing and copyright laws create on campus.
Paulson said some students don’t realize the consequences of file sharing.
“We need to make sure students understand the risk that they’re taking,” he said.
