1 - Introduction

Summary

The central tenet of this book is that we need a new paradigm through which to view the operation and drafting of copyright exceptions. There already exists a large body of literature that has made important contributions to our understandings of the history and judicial interpretation of such provisions. This literature has also explored justifications for exceptions and the role they should play in copyright law. In comparison with these well developed areas of analysis, the attention given to actual understandings of creators, copyright owners and users has been more limited, often appearing as ad hoc examples or impressionistic descriptions of practices. And yet by overlooking these understandings and practices we risk ignoring, to borrow Paul Goldstein’s words, ‘the submerged mass of the iceberg’ in relation to the operation of exceptions. Existing scholarship has paid considerable attention to the tip of the iceberg: the ‘law in books’. Whether the tip is indicative of what lies beneath or is at odds with the ‘law in action’ has been less well elucidated.