
The Economics of Seinfeld - danboarder
http://yadayadayadaecon.com
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glesica
One of the creators here, happy to answer questions. This is a realllly old
project, curious to know how it got submitted :)

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danboarder
Submitter here, I found it via a blog I follow called Marginal Revolution.

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glesica
Ahh, that makes sense. This project was a really interesting case study in how
people move through the web. We had quite a bit of publicity for this early
on, including some write-ups in print publications, major blogs, television,
and radio shows (offline media generated virtually no apparent traffic). I
also posted a link to r/economics when we first launched the site. Despite all
that, one of the most enduring sources of traffic (other than university web
sites, where professors post the link on Blackboard, etc.) has been Marginal
Revolution, which is a relatively niche blog. I'm not really sure why.

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bachmeier
A colleague of mine put together this site on The Economics of the Office:

[http://economicsoftheoffice.com/](http://economicsoftheoffice.com/)

One of the creators of the Seinfeld site got his PhD in our department, so it
influenced the Office site.

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oskarth
This is a great idea! Well-executed too, from what I can tell after a few
minutes of browsing around. I love Seinfeld and have studied some economics -
the concepts are often very simple, but a lot of people seem to lack basic
understanding of them. Hopefully this can bridge that gap for people who think
economics is boring, theoretical, and generally nonsense (which, to be fair,
is often true - but there are a lot of gems, as exemplified on this site).

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scrrr
Careful what you wish for. ;) My hope is that deeper understanding by more
people on how society, economy etc. work has the potential actually make it
fairer/better. However, it will get more and more difficult to find ways for
an 'unfair advantage', which is certainly something many people are looking
for when visiting websites such as HN.

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oskarth
That would make it more desirable to play non-zero sum games, which in my book
is a good thing :)

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anon4
Sued to oblivion by NBC in 3.. 2.. 1..

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glesica
Actually, we've been up for something like five years at this point. No
lawsuits. Our contention is that it is fair use (clearly educational, in my
mind). _knocks on wood_

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Cushman
To preface this: I think the site is neat, and you're not going to be sued,
and you're on good ethical footing. But: Your specific fair use claim doesn't
seem particularly compelling.

First, there's no plausible risk of trademark confusion, so we're only looking
at copyright infringement. The list of Seinfeld episodes, and the facts about
the plot of each one, are non-copyrightable, so AFAICT all we're talking about
is a single 2-5 minute video clip per episode.

The clips are a very small part of the overall episode, and they're narrowly
edited to provide only enough context to demonstrate the point, which speaks
to fair use. The fact that there's an educational, noncommercial purpose also
helps. On the other hand, it's a swath of material cut from across the
entirety of the show, with zero other sources, which is pretty far-ranging and
speaks against fair use.

If you imagine cutting the clips together into a YouTube video, and
distributing that, you would have an extremely tenuous case. You'd be looking
for some reason the use was necessary, not just convenient. So there's
actually a lot riding on that educational purpose, and unfortunately that
seems like the weakest part of the argument.

Here's the rub: The site isn't educating people _about Seinfeld._ It's about
economics. While the clips make for compelling examples, no one could
reasonably claim they're the only or best ways to make those points. In other
words, it doesn't seem like there's any reason you need to use material from
Seinfeld instead of almost any other piece of popular culture. That runs a big
ol' hole through the educational purpose argument; fair use isn't structured
to let you copy whatever you want to, and simply being a teacher doesn't give
us license to infringe at will, alas. (Educational institutions have a
substantially more circumspect understanding of fair use[0] than Reddit does,
and for good reason.)

Keep in mind the educational exemption applies much more strongly to private
performances than reproduction and distribution. I'd guess a university-level,
semester-long course titled "The Economics of Seinfeld" where students watch a
clip every class day would have a rock solid fair use case. But if the
professor starts handing out DVDs, that starts to look like a place where the
rights holder would want to draw a line in the sand.

Anyway, again, for my part I see no moral issue, and I didn't really intend to
belabor the point this much, just reasoning through the logic of fair use. I
assume you haven't been sued for more blasé reasons than your use being
legally defensible, to wit the Web double whammy:

1) Your infinitesimal damages are far below the cost of even sending a C&D
letter, and

2) Suing any fan site, let alone one for a cult classic that's still showing
reruns after fifteen years off the air, is _clinically insane_.

[0] eg. [http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-
use/](http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/)

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pbhjpbhj
Yes, as you say all educational uses are not "fair use" in USA (from my
understanding of the USC as a non-expert non-USA'ian) - this is unlicensed
derivative use of copyright works AFAICT. They're not even that derivative,
the example I looked at seemed to be pretty much just an recut version of the
show (without credits and such of course).

If someone ripped the site and added an extra line of comment to each page
would the authors of that site consider it copying? The site is a very thin
wrapper on the content IMO, like copying a book, cutting out the foreword and
adding a new dust-jacket.

Trademarks: You don't need _actual_ confusion to be infringing a registered
trademark in USA. Even when there is definitely no actual confusion you can
still "infringe" a mark, cf Trademark Dilution, 15 USC 1125(c).

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pbhjpbhj
[If downvoters can cite USC to show any factual errors that would be helpful.
If you just disagree that this use, eg feel this should be allowed use, it
helps to say that too.]

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Cushman
I didn't (and can't) downvote you, but if I had to guess it's because your
comment didn't add much content, but has a very negative tone. HN likes to see
commenters being constructive, not just correcting. (And keep in mind that
things you write on the internet generally read as more argumentative than you
intend them.)

