The House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held a hearing on the scope of fair use on 1/28/14 (video).
Here's an excerpt from "Fair Use Takes Center Stage at Judiciary Committee Hearing": :
One area that got significant attention was the topic of mass digitization, which has been repeatedly determined by courts to be a fair and transformative use. Not only is it fair, but as Professor Peter Jaszi noted during the hearing it is also tremendously beneficial, enabling the indexing and searching of huge sets of works.
Several panelists, however, pointed to the legal status of mass digitization as evidence of "fair use creep," stressing its supposed lack of "transformative" quality over the other fair use considerations. That's a mistake. Mass digitization is absolutely the sort of thing fair use is supposed to enable. Fair use is a flexible doctrine, not a rigid list of exceptions, so that it can accommodate changes in practices or technology.
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