So is a court case involving a video of a dancing baby relevant to the lives and morals of college students? Yes. College students are one of the populations who are most likely to fairly use copyrighted material, and also to infringe copyrighted material. They are also potential copyright holders, especially in the future. This dual position should cause them to consider issues of infringement of copyright and fair use more carefully: when considering whether to infringe a copyright or not or whether a use is fair, they should consider how they will feel in twenty years should they hold copyrights then, and then later on if they hold copyrights, they should make enforcement decisions while keeping in mind their perspective as college students.
College students use YouTube just like Stephanie Lenz, but they also post very large amounts of material on Facebook and other more student-oriented websites, and a large amount of this involves some copyrighted material. Background music in videos is not uncommon there, as is the use of song lyrics without permission. College students' activities run the spectrum from these obviously fair uses, taking small amounts of copyrighted material with no negative (perhaps, rather, a positive) effect on copyright holders' sales, to obviously unfair uses like BitTorrenting large numbers of pirated albums. These tendencies catapult fair use, including some very similar to that in Lenz v. Universal, into the list of ethical and legal considerations most relevant to college students.
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