> Laws should be black and white and people "toeing the line" should be treated no differently beyond verifying that they are indeed on one side or the other.
There are some laws for which this will never be the case:
> In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement.
> So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general guidelines and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation.
Yes, that means that any of the "rules" about things which are guaranteed to be Fair Use you were taught are wrong. The law doesn't work that way, it's designed to not work that way, and the courts will never be persuaded that it ought to work that way.
There are some laws for which this will never be the case:
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-...
> In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement.
> So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general guidelines and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation.
Yes, that means that any of the "rules" about things which are guaranteed to be Fair Use you were taught are wrong. The law doesn't work that way, it's designed to not work that way, and the courts will never be persuaded that it ought to work that way.