Page:Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians.pdf/44

COPYRIGHT LAW - 31 - Domain Mark (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/pdm), which is designed to label works whose copyright has expired everywhere in the world, so that reusers can easily identify those works as being in the worldwide public domain. As of 2016, CC’s public domain tools were used on more than 90 million works.

Final Remarks

A healthy public domain is crucial to preserving our cultural heritage, inspiring new generations of creators, and increasing human knowledge. Because the scope and duration of copyright have grown so much over the years, it can be easy to forget that the public domain exists at all. But the public domain is a critical part of the bargain of copyright and works in the public domain are incredible resources that belong to all of us.

2.4 | EXCEPTIONS AND LIMITATIONS TO COPYRIGHT

The limitations and exceptions built into copyright, including “fair use” and “fair dealing” in some parts of the world, were designed to ensure that the rights of the public were not unduly restricted by copyright.

What would the world look like if copyright had no limits to what it prevented you from doing with copyrighted works?

Imagine resorting to Google’s search engine on your laptop or smartphone to settle a disagreement with a friend about some bit of trivia. You type in your search query, and Google comes up empty. You then learn that a court has required Google to delete its entire web index because it never entered into copyright agreements with each individual author of each individual page on the web. By indexing a web page and showing the public a snippet of the contents in their search results, the court has declared that Google violates the copyrights of hundreds of millions of people and can no longer show those search results.

Fortunately, thanks to the exceptions and limitations built into copyright laws in much of the world, including the fair use doctrine under U. S. copyright law, this hypothetical scenario is unlikely to become reality in most countries. This is one of many illustrations that show why it is so important that copyright has built-in limitations and exceptions.