Google's $2 million Stanford 'fair use' underwriting
Google has funded, to the tune of $2 million, Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society to "change the way content owners approach fair use issues." Stanford:
The Stanford Center for Internet and Society's "Fair Use Project" ("the FUP") was founded in 2006 with a substantial donation from Google, Inc. Its purpose is to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of "fair use" in order to enhance creative freedom.
The FUP represents filmmakers, musicians, artists, writers, scholars and other content creators in a range of disputes that raise important questions concerning fair use and the limits of intellectual property rights...
it will level the playing filed by preventing IP owners from using the threat of big legal fees to force settlement involving the revision or withdrawal of creative works.
In "Is Google's multi-billion free ride over?" I put forth:
Google’s inordinate 26% profit margins are due, in part, to its shrewd, but not content owner friendly, Google business model by “fair use” and “safe harbor” (see “Google ’safe harbor’: ‘Nice’ way to do business?”)…
Google has deftly skirted paying owners of the information that Google uses at Google.com to fuel its multi-billion dollar text ad business.
I underscore, Google has managed to get away with selling billions of dollars of ads against content that it has not paid for via:
1) “Fair-use” and “safe-harbor” legal gamble,
2) Google search traffic "carrot,"
Google has now added another tactic:
3) Subsidizing academic institutions to champion legal doctrine favorable to Google's business model.
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