Siva Vaidhyanathan offers data on the prevalence of the term “fair use” in the media. He counted the number of times that “copyright” and “fair use” were used in the same article in any newspaper (worldwide) listed in Lexis/Nexis. Here’s the data, labeled with some possibly relevant events:
118 in 2001
113 in 2000
20 in 1999
77 in 1998 (DMCA)
40 in 1997 (WIPO)
51 in 1996
26 in 1995
40 in 1994 (2 Live Crew)
35 in 1993
24 in 1992
27 in 1991 (Biz Markie)
26 in 1990
7 in 1989
11 in 1988 (Salinger)
17 in 1987 (Salinger)
13 in 1986
13 in 1985 (Nation-Ford)
13 in 1984 (Betamax case)
