With the digitization of more and more information access to it has never been easier. The creators of the material claim misuse is widespread and it is impacting their economic interests. This has even been given the colorful name of "piracy".

I take this to mean obtaining a copy of material that is available for purchase without paying the original vendor. This mostly means clones of CDs and DVDs. But has now been expanded to include copies available for download from sites not authorized by the copyright owner such as musical selections and video presentations. I think the concept of "fair use" is not an issue in these cases.

What I am concerned with is incorporating a portion of an electronically available work into another one. A common situation, currently, is the pasting of news articles into blog entries. In my case it is the pasting of copyrighted photographic images from my web site into another web page.

Under the concept of fair use, an extract of a copyrighted work can be used in a work of criticism or parody. However, taking an image and using it to decorate another page doesn't seem to fall under this heading. And while a blog may be discussing a copyrighted news article quoting all or substantially all of the original also seems to be abuse.

On the other side, the claims for what is copyrightable seem also to have gotten out of hand. For example, photographers of the exterior of buildings facing a public street are being asked to pay a royalty for use of a "copyrighted design". Likenesses or imitations of dead famous people can't be used without permission of the estate. The use of Charlie Chaplin in a series of IBM commercials some time ago is an example. Is his persona protected forever? How about George Washington?

Another abuse has been the continual extension of the duration of copyright protection to effectively forever. The key Mickey Mouse case now extends protection to a character created over 80 years ago. On the other hand the character is still a viable source of revenue to Disney, so where does one draw the line? Perhaps this should be a trademark issue instead. What happens to items where the original copyright owner has died or can't be found? This is the so-called orphan problem.

The latest battle in this struggle is over the attempt by Google to digitize, and make searchable, the entire contents of several academic libraries. This will include copyrighted and out of copyright material. Is digitizing it, making it searchable, and delivering extracts, fair use?

One argument that is made frequently is that once the technology is available there is no stopping it from being used. This is an appeal to practicality, not ethics.

How do balance the rights of information providers with the those of the public?