Comment by badlibrarian

You can be sued for anything and asked to defend your position for anything.

You need to stop positing hypotheticals and start stating examples. Yes, technology advances and everything from abortion to transportation needs to be reconsidered on an ongoing basis. Admittedly the process for doing so hasn't changed much since the 18th century, but do you have a proposal for improving it?

Between the four factor test, being able to petition the Librarian of Congress for exemptions, and compulsory licensing, in many cases copyright is in a better state than most.

Aside from Internet Archive who continued to do something 400,000 times despite being formally asked to stop three times (scanning old records), I'm unaware of any similar acts of stupidity. Can you provide any examples of recent problems in the space?

Do you have some great idea that you're afraid to try because of lack of specificity in copyright law? There's no shortage of VCs who will take the risk sorting it out; they've made lots of money doing this before.

And you can always ask for permission first. But I suppose where's the fun in that.