The Shifted Librarian on the value of fair use:
And that was the point of the article — that these directors were growing up in the age of the computer and it was influencing their styles of filmmaking. They no longer thought of movies in terms of one linear sequence, a start to finish proposition. You can see the effects of this new, often frenetic, style very clearly in films like Memento, Run Lola Run, and Moulin Rouge. A lot of adults don't like these movies because they embody the new style, but they all take cliches from the past and re-invent them.
And to my mind, that's the type of creativity that Lessig warns we are losing every time we extend copyright. This new generation of directors will give way to the Net Gen directors, and who knows what they could create if given the opportunity, much like rap and hip hop became new genres inspired by reinventing earlier works. What if Baz Luhrmann couldn't have made his version of Romeo + Juliet if Shakespeare's work was still copyrighted? Of course, some of you are saying that might be a good thing, but the point is that it would have stifled innovation and creativity.
