Attorney Brandon Butler Talks About Copyright and Fair Use

Brandon Butler is a rockstar in the copyright world, focusing on libraries and fair use. He has now opened a law firm that focuses on documentary films and fair use, among other subjects. He joins us for an hour. The law firm, Jaszi Butler, can be found at https://www.usefairuse.com/.

We talk about the state of fair use, and in particular the current case at the U.S. Supreme Court about an Andy Warhol painting of Prince. We also discuss whether fair use applies to people taking pictures of patterns in quilt shops. (Towards the end of the interviews)

Here is his bio: Brandon Butler is a copyright lawyer and expert on the lawful use of archival materials. Brandon is currently the Director of Information Policy at the University of Virginia Library. Previously, he was the Practitioner-in-Residence at the American University Washington College of Law’s Samuelson-Glushko Intellectual Property Clinic, where he taught courses on copyright and fair use, and supervised student attorneys in the representation of artists, filmmakers, publishers, authors, and entrepreneurs in a variety of intellectual property matters. Brandon was also the Director of Public Policy at the Association of Research Libraries, where he advocated for fair copyright and intellectual freedom on behalf of the nation’s most prominent academic and research libraries. Brandon graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and was an associate at Dow Lohnes LLP (later merged with Cooley LLP), in Washington, D.C. Brandon is the Law and Policy Advisor to the Software Preservation Network, and is an Advisor to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Copyright. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Copyright in Education and Libraries and is the author of a variety of journal articles and book chapters about copyright and fair use. In college, Brandon was the local music reporter for Athens, GA alt-weekly The Flagpole, and he took a semester off to tour the country as a substitute guitarist in his friends’ punk band.Brandon is admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C.