Quote:
Originally Posted by avantman42
My understanding is that trademarks have to be actively enforced, but copyright doesn't. If I'm wrong, please correct me, I'd like to know about it.
I don't know enough about US fair rights exemptions to know how water-tight Google's case was, but Wikipedia says that the appeals court found unanimously for Google. That suggests to me that Google had a pretty good case.
|
Once the original judge decided it was fair use, then it was pretty unlikely that he was going to be overturned. Copyright law, and specifically fair use, in the US has a lot of common law in it, i.e. based on judicial decisions rather than clear legislation.
Copyright enforcement is a civil action and thus requires the plaintiff to actively defend his copyright. So basically, you have to sue to enforce it. It wasn't the government going after all those grannies and little kids, it was the record companies.