On Saturday March 1st, members of the Second Life Bar Association (SLBA) – real-life attorneys – sat down at the SLBA’s auditorium to discuss matters relating to copyright and fair use as they apply to US law and might impact content creators in Second Life.
In attendance were Agenda Faromet, who in real life is an attorney specialising in privacy and internet law operating out of San Francisco and Tim Faith (SL: Yoss Kamachi), a Maryland attorney with a strong background in IT and who deals with matters related to copyright, IP, trademark, etc.
In all, the session lasted just under 90 minutes, with initial presentations by Tim and Agenda, followed by joint coverage of a number of fair use cases in the US, prior to an open Q&A session. An audio recording was made of the meeting, but suffered somewhat from microphones being overdriven.
What follows, is a transcript of that recording, which has been cleaned-up as far as possible, with unnecessary background noises, echoes, and pauses / repetitions edited out. For ease of reference, the transcript and audio have been divided into four sections:
- Copyright and fair use (1): Tim Faith discusses the general principles of copyright and introduces the concept of fair use, examining both in the context of some high-profile cases which have taken place in the US courts
- Copyright and fair use (2): Agenda Faromet examines the concept of fair use and dispels some common misconceptions and corrects some misunderstandings surrounding it before touching upon DMCA
- Copyright and fair use (3): recent cases
- Copyright and fair use (4): Q and A session
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