I thought you would like to see a recently decided US case where fair use was upheld as a defense. I collected some materials to explain fair use in an overview the other day, but here's a case that explains the elements that courts look at, in a real live case, and it particularly makes clear what transformative use means.

July 11, 2007, will mark the third-annual global "Fair Use Day," but chances are this is the first you've heard of it. Started back in 2005, "Fair Use Day" (project website) was created by Eric Clifford to raise awareness of the shifting balance in copyright laws around the world.

Earlier this month, the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that professional sports leagues, Hollywood studios, and book publishers were all using copyright notices that misrepresented the law. Now, the group has launched a web site called Defend Fair Use that shows they are serious about making the complaint stick.

So, I understand this [quote from Microsoft's web site] to mean that Microsoft pays these researchers to think and study and figure out ways to innovate in search so Microsoft can beat Google and Yahoo. Microsoft, I would guess, gets rights to the IP in some fashion. No wonder it has spent a fair amount of effort trying to get the community to drop the GPL and adopt the BSD license instead.

If you’ve been following Linux kernel news then you’ve probably heard about the new Completely Fair Scheduler that has been merged into the upcoming 2.6.23 kernel release. I decided to do a bit of research into how the current Linux scheduler works, and what makes the new scheduling algorithm so interesting. Here’s what I learned.

Becta, the United Kingdom government's adviser on IT in schools, has taken Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading over anti-competitive practices--but open source campaigners say Becta is still effectively promoting Microsoft.

The Linux kernel process scheduler, as you know it, has been completely ripped out and replaced with a completely new one called Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS).

"I haven’t talked about it here much, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last year and a half working with people in the IETF to get RFC2616 — the HTTP specification — revised. [...] it looks like Roy’s partitioned drafts will become the basis of the new work, and Roy, Julian and Yves will work together as editors on the new documents...."

"It was a partial harmonisation with only those parts of American law that favoured certain interests," he said. "The reality is that American law doesn't change; Australian law changes, but specifically it excludes the consumer-friendly parts of American copyright law, namely the doctrine of fair use."