Yes, fair use makes exceptions for small numbers of copies etc. in education.
But here's the thing: fair use can be brought up as a defense at trial -- but first you have to go to the (very large) expense of getting to trial in the first place.
My serious question is: what is to prevent individual researchers from just publishing what they have as a PDF or WordPress article on a random site on the Internet?
In order to be published, they have to sign over either the copyright or exclusive rights. Which generally includes even giving their students copies of their own papers.
I recently did a paper on Albert Michelson -- who died in 1931, so all of his papers have actually been in the public domain for more than a decade.
Despite this, I had to do some hunting to find copies that weren't paywalled, even back into the 1880s. Props where due, though -- the Harvard University library collection is excellent, high-resolution, and wide open.
Because, of course, the great majority of people carefully analyze the potential hazards that might appear on a road, such as cars backing out of driveways, and slow down to a speed that allows time to avoid collisions.
That's why, for instance, nobody ever runs into boulders on the road when driving around curves on mountain roads -- they know that turn very well and regardless of the silly regulatory 40 mph sign they know it's perfectly safe at 65.
Most nontrivial electrical loads are intermittent: refrigerators, stoves, heating, air conditioning, clothes dryers, etc.
Ideally a homeowner would provision to meet his average load during peak load times, but due to the fact that his short-term peak is greater than the average, he would be paying retail for the peaks and getting wholesale for the valleys.
That's an opportunity for arbitrage: pool the loads of a neighborhood and the peaks and valleys get smaller relative to the average, thus saving money.
The folks who sized solar generation to meet *their* needs aren't harmed by this change.
If you mean "minimum load" then, yes, they're ahead because they never send any to the grid in the first place. If you men "their average load," not so -- they're paying for the extra KW when the air conditioning kicks on and getting back a fraction when the AC is off.So in the course of an hour, they're behind by quite a bit.
There absolutely is a market, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
The most basic characteristic of a market is that there are multiple buyers and sellers who negotiate prices by going elsewhere if they don't like what they're offered. And this applies to the situation you describe
If utilities don't do retail metering, consumers can get similar results by pooling their loads. Solar cogeneration is short-term steady while most domestic loads are intermittent, which means that over an hour a consumer might be a net provider to the grid but get charged amost as much as without cogeneration.
On the other hand, a buyers' co-op smooths out the load variations and approaches the effects of net retail metering. Which is appropriate, because (unlike wholesale rates) cogeneration does not put extra load on the grid.
If utilities don't adapt to these realities in a more realistic way than offering wholesale (i.e. solar plant) rates to cogeneration providers, they're likely to see a lot of pressure for cities and especially smaller towns taking over last-mile electrical distribution to get the same effect.
This last is not completely hypothetical; at least one Sunbelt town (mine) is moving in that direction.
Because many school districts pay a premium to teachers of STEM subjects (and more for AP and Honors courses) the teaching slots for those classes are highly sought-after. The result is that they go to the teachers who have clout (seniority, connections, etc.) regardless of their actual ability to even understand the material.
Example: my kids' high school AP calculus class was taught by someone who had never taken a college-level math class, while another teach with a math PhD was stuck with remedial classes. Great way to retain bright and idealistic STEM teachers, that.
But more and more of them are by no means able to do any meaningful work anymore by the time they hit 60.
Say what? Look, I've been defending retirement at 65 for a long time because there are too many jobs (think roofers and miners) that are too physically demanding to keep up. On the other hand, I have professors who are past 70 and still scary sharp. One who gets around with a walker but can reason rings around people half his age in his field (materials physics.)
The thing is, it depends
Friction is a drag.
