Ah, copyright. Eric Goldman alerts us to to a new bit of copyright nonsense. Jieun Kiaer, an Oxford professor of Korean linguistics, recently published an academic book called Emoji Speak: Communic…
Of course I assume the scientist contacted the lawyers who know the copyright laws better than me, but shouldn't this be under fair use as providing commentary? It's not like it's just an album of emojis, it's a book that describes them in great detail, which is transformative.
Now, my first reaction to this is that using the emoji and stickers and whatnot in the book seems like a very clear fair use situation. But… that requires a publisher willing to take up the fight (and an insurance company behind the publisher willing to finance that fight). And, that often doesn’t happen. Publishers are notoriously averse to supporting fair use, because they don’t want to get sued.