Constitutional Quirks = Pricey Plumbing

Julian Sanchez (2010) is less extremist in his views on copyright, though in agreement over the rigidity of the laws as antithetical to the continuation of culture and its incentives, which the laws are meant to be protecting. Sanchez tentatively quotes Sonny Bunch (America’s Future Foundation) in Bunch’s critique of Yglesias’s “oddly solipsistic reading” of copyright’s ‘social aims’, Bunch concluding emphatically with “artists. . .have a right to profit from their labours”. Sanchez rebuts Bunch’s defence of copyright’s assertion of “exclusive rights to the promotion of artistic and scientific progress” by citing some of the law’s ‘convenient’ ambiguities, or “fuzzy boundaries”. ‘Fair use’ Sanchez explains is a constitutional loophole, allowing a low-level of unauthorised usage of someone else’s ‘property’ (intellectual property that is, not a squatters law); however, what legally amounts to a ‘low level’ is a grey area, frustratingly void of pre-emptive legal reference. What is more, Sanchez cites the absurd reach of ‘fair use’ as encompassing the rights of those providing mere services. Does this mean plumbers and electricians have the legal ammunition to sue competitor industry-men for copyright infringement? Conceivably, yes.