Fair Use Economy Worth $4.5 Trillion

The CCIA, a lobby group which represents major technology companies has released a study which says that the "fair use economy" represents 1/6 of the US economy. Sounds pretty impressive, right?

If it were true. The report casts such a broad net that fair use becomes an integral part of industries as varied as newspaper publishing and wire manufacturers. Read the study yourself, but I would like to close with a fair use of Nick Carr's post on the subject:

I have to admit that it would never have crossed my mind to think of wire manufacturers as being part of the fair use economy. But that's just a failure of imagination on my part, I guess.

What's most amusing is that, if you took a similarly expansive view of the role of copyright, you could easily categorize all of these industries as part of the "copyright economy." (Copyrighted content goes over wires, too, doesn't it?) And it would be an equally meaningless exercise.

You can be, as I am, a strong advocate of liberal fair-use rules and a strong opponent of onerous copyright restrictions and still be appalled by this kind of fake research. Can't industry groups make their points without stretching the truth beyond recognition and, in the process, insulting everyone's intelligence? Fair use deserves better.