Isn downloading and uploading of digital material protected by the Fair Use clause of copyright law?
No. Fair Use basically covers the use of copyrighted materials for academic kinds of activities – teaching, scholarship, research, news reporting, etc. It strictly regulates the nature of the copyrighted material; the specifics of how it’s being used; the amount that’s being used (as a proportion of the whole work); and the effect of such use on the potential market for that material. If you’re sharing your Eminem CD with others on the Internet – even if you bought the CD legally – it’s not fair use.
