MPAA Opposes Fair Use, Even As Its Members Rely On It

As Techdirt reported this morning, emails leaked from the Sony hack show MPAA CEO Chris Dodd campaigning to USTR Michael Froman against fair use.

As DisCo has previously covered, Sony Pictures Classics, a subsidiary of MPAA member Sony, successfully argued that its use of a nine-word Faulkner quote in the film Midnight in Paris was fair use, saying: “Fair use is an integral part of the Copyright Act. Without fair use, critics and scholars could not quote the very works they write about.”  Similarly, DisCo covered how the NFL and Baltimore Ravens also successfully argued fair use, with the MPAA filing an amicus brief in support of this doctrine.  After that brief drew media attention, MPAA’s Ben Sheffner wrote in a blog post that the MPAA’s “members rely on the fair use doctrine every day when producing their movies and television shows – especially those that involve parody and news and documentary programs. And it’s routine for our members to raise fair use – successfully – in court.”  And several years ago, Fritz Attaway, then a senior MPAA executive, explained to a National Academies review that the “beauty of fair use is that it is a living thing . . . like our Constitution . . . that can adapt to new technology.”

One would think that when USTR announced in 2012 its intention to promote U.S. limitations and exceptions like fair use in the TPP, the film industry would have supported codifying the exception that it both relies upon and celebrates.