If, as Meeker says, Silicon Valley is litigation shy, that puts higher education in the downright phobic category. Howard Besser, School of Information and Management Systems, UC Berkeley, has long lectured on imaging technology, from cryptolopes to encryption. But today he returned to first principles, putting cryptolopes and watermarking into social and public policy perspective. Another threat to fair use is in technological developments. Digital labels can be more or less obtrusive.
Watermarks can be more or less visible, can be inappropriately applied.
Long considered panaceas to i.p. Panel 3 began with Mary Levering's second presentation, a summary of the history of American copyright law from 1976 to the present. Although I was surprised that her summary did not explicitly reach back further than 1976, she did acknowledge that the four factors in fair use evolved over two hundred years of common law debate. One theme of her history seemed to be the need for fair use guidelines. More on this later.