| | Teresa, as the cited passage about copyright law suggests, "fair use" of copyrighted material involves either relatively brief quotations, as in reviews or discussion forums, or -- if the material is copied extensively -- reproduction only for personal use, as with teachers in a classroom setting, students, scholars, or writers using the material for research or study in private.
An adaptation or dramatization of a fiction work, in whole or in part, for public presentation does not fit within these guidelines. The copyright violations at issue are several:
* Loss of direct compensation: failure to pay the copyright owner for an adaptation of his work (i.e., stealing). This is true whether or not the person violating the copyright seeks paying customers for his own presentation of it (just as it is still "stealing" if you take something from someone's house, even if you then give it away).
* Loss of future income opportunities: potential deprivation of the copyright owner of income he might have derived from the eventual commercial sale of the same rights. (Why should anyone buy the YouTube or dramatization rights from the owner if the material is already publicly available in dramatized form?)
* Reputation: potential damage to the copyright holder's reputation if an unauthorized or distorted rendition of his work is circulated. (An artist's right to control the quality and presentation of his own material.)
* Loss of property-rights protections: Allowing the material to enter "the public domain" without legal objection is generally regarded under the law as a de facto surrender of the copyright protection.
I have no doubt that the person doing this is a well-meaning fan. And if the fellow limits his presentation to the few "outtakes" of Galt's speech that he's posted so far -- which amount merely to excerpts -- he might not get in trouble.
But if he plans an ambitious, ongoing dramatized rendition of the entire speech, he's courting a copyright-infringement lawsuit, his "good intentions" notwithstanding.
Incidentally, while I have no inclination (and certainly no time) to discuss patents and copyrights, I subscribe to the general view of them put forth by Ayn Rand in her article on this topic. I emphatically disagree with those libertarians and anarchists who deny the validity of legal protections for intellectual property -- i.e., who reduce all property claims to the physical objects themselves, but not to the intellectual or creative component of that property.
To the contrary, I argue that virtually ALL property claims are rooted in, or derived from, the intellectual or creative element -- in what the property owner has creatively added to the physical object, and not merely the physical object itself. But that's a topic for another time and place.
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