Overreaching Copyright Notices

Continuing in my series on which extend past their duty and rightful place, I have the "Copyright Policy" for a popular blog, Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal:

* If you want link from your site to Digital Inspiration

You are welcome to use short quotes from Digital Inspiration in your website or blog as long as proper credit is given. But please quote only short excerpts - up to one paragraph - from my site when you make the link.

You must credit Digital Inspiration when you quote. Always provide a hyperlink (full URL) to the article where the quote is from. Don't hyperlink just to the homepage. Copy quoted material exactly, enclose it in quotations marks, and mention Digital Inspiration immediately before or after the quote.

For Print media: you must print the full Internet address of the post.

What Amit is describing above is fair use and he cannot dictate how you exercise it. The beauty of the right of fair use is that it does not require the support or agreement of an author. He is right that I am "welcome to use short quotes from Digital Inspiration," but in contrast to what he would have you believe, the length can easily be longer than one paragraph and I do not need to credit him (though it only makes sense).

American law has differed from Europe in that the USA has never set distinct principles for what constitutes fair use. Instead, a court must decide the reasonableness of the excerpt.

I really enjoy Amit's blog and hope he can capitalize on his hard work, but the danger of misinforming the public about copyright is that it threatens to influence a generation of zombies who accept strict content control.