Ken, you've captured the point of my post very well. The ambiguity is an issue, in that the more educators engage in unnecessary copyright clearance, the more that copyright holders can argue that such compliance is a de facto community standard.
I'm not sure how useful the doctrine can be for reuse, since it's meant as an affirmative defense for use of copyrighted materials on a case by case basis. However, I could see educators sharing examples of resources they've been able to use in classrooms because of clarified standards of fair use, which would be pretty close. Perhaps such an exchange of suggestions would be a way of bringing in educators to then consider open resources as well?
Wayne, it's true that fair use is an American concept, but in the Commonwealth there's a related concept called fair dealing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
I'd be interested to know whether similar issues with community standards apply in Commonwealth jurisdictions, and whether a statement of best practices might therefore be useful in those countries as well.
-=Steve=-
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