Contrasting opinions on Fair Use in copyright law

Here’s a fun exercise. Contrast Judge Posner’s recent posts explaining the Fair Use doctrine (here and here) to the position of Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the Motion Picture Association of America (here, as blogged by Ernie).

I have to admit, its hard to understand Mr. Valenti’s position. Not understand as in seeing the reasoning behind it, but understand as in being able to state exactly what his position is. My take home from Ernie is that Mr. Valenti actually believes that fair use is not in the law of copyright. Hmmm. I guess Judge Posner should have read the interview with Mr. Valenti before he went through the effort of explaining a doctrine that doesn’t exist.