I am against the idea of having a fair use exception for several reasons.
First of all, I think that in reality what we have already is very close to the U.S. system. We have purposes that are extremely similar to the fair use purposes. We have criteria that are paraphrases of the fair use criteria, and I really don't think that there is that much of a difference in terms of what the situation is doing. What is happening, though, is that, for the examples we have, it's not just “such as”. I see a very dangerous slope. “Such as” does not mean anything that is fair. “Such as” should mean that we keep within the range of what is already enumerated as possible topics, which is what we already have with our fair dealing exception.
Second, many of these fair use exceptions in the United States have led to results that are extremely difficult to reconcile with a fair use system. They are very criticized, and lastly, I would say that, in order for a fair use system to work in the magnitude that people would want it to work, you would need an extremely litigious society. We are about a 10th of the size of the U.S. We don't have the same kind of court litigation attitude as in the U.S., and I think that this is an important factor in order not to create uncertainties.
Thank you.