This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 11, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How stressed is the fair use doctrine meant to protect people from their non-commercial copies of copyrighted works.

Is it really adequate in an age of peer-to-peer file sharing?

Picking up on a debate taking place at Cato Unbound, Cato Institute adjunct scholar Tim Lee weighs in.

For decades people have listened to the radio, they've taped shows off of the radio. have

to listen to the radio. in fact some DJ's in New York at the original rap stations,

the radio stations, they would design their shows

in such a way that they could be recorded specifically to tape, to a 60 minute audio cassette.

And they produced their shows in such a way that they could get more music out there to people.

You know, presume there are some benefits associated with that for artists that are not yet

hugely famous. That's a benefit to get your music out there to people. So in that sense,

file sharing, particularly music, it's been going off for some time. That's definitely true.

And this has been sort of a gray area in copyright law.

I mean theoretically copyright law kicks in any time a copy has made but there are some

doctrines notably the doctrine called fair use. This says that there are some

some doctrines, notably the doctrine called fair use. This says that there are some exceptions for

private non-commercial activities like

taping off the radio or with with VCRs if you tape a show and watch it for later.

Generally, that's either been legal or even in cases

where the courts would say it's technically not legal,

there wasn't any practical enforcement mechanism.

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