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  3. A recent Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris delivers a slightly changed version of a famous William Faulkner quotation. Faulkne

A recent Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris delivers a slightly changed version of a famous William Faulkner quotation. Faulkne

admin2014-06-25  30
问题     A recent Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris delivers a slightly changed version of a famous William Faulkner quotation. Faulkner himself would likely have been pleased. But his estate sued, arguing, absurdly, that using the quote was a copyright violation. Also last week, the Supreme Court heard a copyright case that could make it illegal to resell books, even household objects without the permission of the manufacturer.
    Copyright has been getting out of control for some time, but the Faulkner lawsuit and the Supreme Court case show just how bad things are getting. If the Courts and Congress do not put a halt to this expansion, copyright owners will be able to lock up more and more intellectual property.
    The nation’s founders put protection of copyright in the Constitution because they rightly saw it as a way to encourage artists and scientists to create. Samuel Johnson may have been overstating things when he said "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. " But ensuring that authors are decently paid for their work certainly encourages them to create.
    The trouble is, copyright owners have gotten far too assertive about promoting their rights. The Faulkner estate’s suit is an example of copyright holders’ increasing willingness to sue over even minor uses of their work. Copyright law allows for "fair use"— it allows people to use parts of copyrighted books under certain circumstances, including when the amount of the work used is not excessive and it is being put to a creative or scholarly use. The Woody Allen quote should clearly be protected as fair use. If it is not, artists will have to be much more careful when they make even glancing references to the work of other artists. That would be troubling because much art builds on what came before it. Faulkner did this as much as anyone.
    The case the Supreme Court heard last week poses a challenge to the "first sale" doctrine, which lets people who buy copyrighted items to resell them as they wish. The publisher John Wiley & Sons argues that the doctrine does not apply to goods made overseas — and that if the defendant in the case wanted to sell the books in the U. S. , he had to get its permission first. If John Wiley & Sons wins the case and copyright law is read too broadly, it could make it difficult for American consumers to resell all sorts of foreign-made goods.
    It is fashionable in some circles these days to argue that "information wants to be free" and that copyright should be radically rolled back or eliminated. That goes too far — it benefits all of society if creative people are fairly compensated. But even if information does not want to be free, it should not be as expensive as the Faulkner estate and John Wiley & Sons would like to make it.
The author’s argument for the Woody Allen quote is mainly based on the fact that______.
选项 A、new works are often created from old ones
B、artists are becoming increasingly money-oriented
C、copyright law defines it as "fair use"
D、Faulkner himself also built his work on others’
答案A
解析 原文对伍迪·艾伦引用福克纳一案的论述集中在第四段。前两句指出现状，版权所有者过于推进自己的权利，即便是对他们的作品稍加引用都会发起诉讼。第三、四句作者指出；版权法允许对他人作品的“合理使用”，伍迪·艾伦的引用应受到保护。最后指出，否则，艺术家即使瞄一眼他人作品也要加倍小心，而艺术又是建立在原有艺术基础之上的。可见，作者认为该保护伍迪·艾伦的理由是基于“艺术原本需要借鉴他人”这一事实，[A]选项正确。
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