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Copyright & Fair Use Blog
The Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University worked with veteran documentary filmmakers to create the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in November 2005. Through their filmmaker professional associations, these practitioners drafted a clear and easy-to-understand statement of reasonable approaches to fair use. For more resources, click on Copyright & Fair Use.
Discuss your views on copyright and fair use for media that matters!
Posts
Who is doing social media training?
Posted by JD Lasica on Nov 17, 2008
A handful of us in the social media space are moving ahead with the idea of planning a series of Social Media Innovation Camps around the country. Two weeks ago Jessica Clark posed the question, Could “Social Media Innovation Camps” help power ground-up public media? We’re still at the stage of gauging reaction (positive so far) and garnering input on similar initiatives (sparse so far. So I thought I’d share what I’ve uncovered to date. The notion of increasing civic engagement through social media is not a new one, but it has taken on widely differing forms depending on which… more
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Where Hostile Governments Meet Public Media
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 14, 2008
How can public media develop in regions where governments are hostile to press freedoms? A look at emerging projects in the South Caucasus—a region of independent former Soviet countries linked both geographically and historically—offers some clues. We have created a list of five notable public media projects: Institute for Reporter’s Freedom and Safety, Caucasus Center of Peacemaking Initiatives, Internews, the South Caucasus blogosphere and lastly everyone’s favorite Facebook. Not quite initiated into the EU like the Baltic states, but not as far east as Borat’s Kazakhstan, the South Caucasus countries stand at the crossroads of capitalist western ideals and the… more
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Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Publication!
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 11, 2008
Here at the Center for Social Media, and in conjunction with the Program on Information, Justice and Intellectual Property, and the Media Education Lab, we are proud to announce our Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. Check out the article written by Jeff Young at the Chronicle for Higher Education and now you can get your very own copy here. Share it with any educators you know. This is a perfect tool to inspire and enable teachers and students to use copyrighted material in the classroom when it’s appropriate and necessary. more
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Vote on Every Human Has Rights Media Awards
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 10, 2008
Our friends at Internews have announced a great public media project titled Every Human Has Rights Media Awards, organized on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). They have asked the public to vote on the Public Prize. Internews explains here: Vote online to select the most eye-opening report, from a selection of 30 winning stories from journalists and bloggers around the world. The Public Prize will be awarded on 6 December 2008 in Paris, France during a ceremony supported by The Elders, the EHHR campaign for the 60th Anniversary of the UDHR.… more
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So You Think You Can Be President?
Posted by Alison Hanold on Nov 4, 2008
This campaign season has been lively, intense, and the inspiration for a wide array of online video. We’ve spent nearly a year tracking political remix online, and showing how online video creators are exercising fair use of copyrighted material in order to create powerful and innovative commentary on the political landscape. The evolution of online video has become nationally relevant with this election season, and to commemorate election day, we have one last video to share. Jonathan McIntosh’s So You Think You Can Be President? This video cuts together the presidential debates with commentary from the judges of the Fox… more
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Should Online Video Look More like Wikipedia or TV?
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Nov 3, 2008
A clutch of people concerned with the future of online video, including Center director Pat Aufderheide, met at Yale on October 31 to talk about what it would take to make creating an online video look a little more like, say, creating a text document to share on the Internet. Turns out that online video faces serious challenges, if it’s to become a tool for participatory public media rather than just more TV. Most online video software and related programs (such as editing programs) have been developed by companies as proprietary products for specific purposes, rather than in the open-ended,… more
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Activating the Archive
Posted by Barbara Abrash on Oct 30, 2008
Last week I visited Chimpanzee Productions for a sneak preview of an unprecedented experiment in marrying documentary filmmaking with multiplatform social networking. Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is a 2-hour documentary film and multimedia outreach project, Inspired by Dr. Deborah Willis’ path-breaking book, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (Norton, 2000), that reveals the ways in which African American photographers – known and unknown – have constructed representations of themselves and their social, political, and aesthetic worlds. In what filmmaker and president of Chimpanzee Productions, Thomas Allen… more
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Public Anthro Conference
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 29, 2008
On October 31st and November 1st at American University the Anthropology department is hosting the more
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Civic media training
Posted by JD Lasica on Oct 24, 2008
Everybody is doing social media these days. But who’s doing social media training? More specifically, training sessions for public media—or if you will, public-spirited social media or civic media. Who’s holding workshops? What kind of information are you including that’s specific to the public interest, or civic action? Who are your primary target communities for these workshops? Please post your comments below, or email me at jdlasica[at]gmail[.]com. more
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Journalistic principles
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 24, 2008
/www.american.edu/sis/” target=blank>American University’s School of International Service), was trying to imagine the entities that could issue and publicize standards; however, he said, the example of the Center for Social Media’s more
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Campaign videos—fair use, not infringement
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 20, 2008
Political campaigns have been busily clipping out snippets of news coverage and building them into campaign videos. And the TV networks have just as busily been sending demands to YouTube and other video sites to remove those videos as violation of copyright. Only problem: they’re not violations of copyright. They’re fully within the umbrella of fair use—the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment in some cases. Learn more at the /www.eff.org/files/filenode/ip_freespeech/letter+to+YouTube.pdf” target=blank”> letters to the networks and to Youtube suggesting that they recognize the law and even use resources such as the Center’s Code of Best Practices… more
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Open debates: linking copyright and the new public media
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 16, 2008
Last night’s tense exchange between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama marked the end of an extraordinary cycle of debates. The sheer number, combined with the unusual amount of public interest, forced organizers to innovate new forms and provide more openings for interaction. Now, a bipartisan coalition of newsmakers, media critics and bloggers are demanding permanent change to make the debates more “of the people,” in part by asking the networks to release debate footage into the public domain to be used for commentary and exchange on online platforms. In a letter to the candidates, the coalition proposed two… more
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Submit your film to the Media That Matters Film Festival!
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 10, 2008
Submit your film now for the chance to be one of the final twelve jury-selected films and become part of our outreach and distribution efforts to create social change through film. Following a New York City Premiere, Awards Ceremony and industry networking events in June 2009, your film will take part in the Media That Matters international, multi-platform campaign with DVD distribution, broadcasts, streaming and hundreds of screenings across the globe! We create accompanying discussion guides and screening materials to promote conversation and encourage educators, activists and organizations alike to Take Action around your film. All finalists will be awarded… more
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A Case of Selective Censorship
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 9, 2008
The recent pull of Saturday Night Lives’ Bailout skit has got us wondering — why did NBC choose to upload their popular Palin skits on several massive online video platforms (hulu.com, youtube.com) but in the same week, aggressively clean the web of this Bailout skit? Some have argued that this was done in fear that the Bailout skit would sharpen criticism of democrats and therefore hurt Barack Obama’s campaign. A closer look at the details offers the explanation of a potential law suit from “victims” of the bailout skit. The underlying issue for us at the Center, however, is the… more
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Wikipedia’s Town Hall on Sarah Palin Techn
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 8, 2008
Some time ago, I argued that you could see Wikipedia as “the new town hall.” Wikipedia entries aren’t stable encyclopedia entries, even if they look like it; they are active, constantly morphing sites of public discussion about how to understand something. Others have made this point repeatedly, and probably Yochai Benkler has put the frame around the argument most authoritatively, in his Wealth of Networks. Now, take a look at the Sarah Palin entry on Wikipedia. Thanks to an analysis by Dan Cohen, the brilliant director of George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media, he shows 500 entries… more
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Blogosphere Blasts the Bailout Bill
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 3, 2008
So, it’s official, the House passed the bailout. It’s also official that the financial crisis has generated a groundswell of public media responses. These have ranged widely, from citizen initiatives to professionally produced tools from commercial outlets. According to Micah Siftry of the Personal Democracy Forum, the networked public sphere is rising and taking this bull by the horns. “Whatever happens with the bailout bill, I don’t think this genie can be stuffed back into the bottle. An old way of doing things is dying, and the new one being born isn’t quite in place yet,” he writes on an… more
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Social Media Changes the Face of Debate
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 26, 2008
The presidential debates are coming! This year, they are sparking unprecedented forms of social media. Here at the CSM we’ve made a list of our top three social media debate initiatives. Check them out and get involved in one. 1. MYSPACE’s MYDEBATE: Just due to the sheer number of users (over 6,000 and counting) and beautiful design this takes the number one spot. This interactive program gets you prepped on the issues to be discussed, allows you to identify your favorite candidate and will have a live chat available during the debates for users to interact. 2. Debatepedia: This wiki,… more
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Documentary Film + Direct Action = Social Media
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 17, 2008
What happens when you see a documentary film that moves you? Do you feel sad? Helpless? It is important to remember that social justice documentary films are a form of social media that require follow up to be fully effective. In order to take the leap from informed yet helpless spectator to empowered social media activist, it requires further investigation and action. At the Death House Door , one of the films chosen for our Human Rights Film Series , is a particularly poignant example of a way to take information from a film and act on it. At the… more
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Harry Potter and Fair Use
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Sep 14, 2008
Once upon a time, a man named Vander Ark was devoted to the world of Harry Potter. He created an online reference source, often quoting or paraphrasing directly from J.K. Rowling’s books; the source was widely appreciated, including by Rowling herself. Then he decided to publish it in book form. J.K. Rowling sued, and he defended himself with the copyright doctrine of fair use. And he lost. The judge found that he had taken too much of Rowling’s creative work. The decision went against a fair user, but it wasn’t a decision that was all bad for fair users. In… more
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Total Recut Video Remix Challange Winners Announced
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 12, 2008
We were happy to participate in the Total Recut Video Remix Challenge. Just recently the winners were announced. You can check out their impressive work at TotalRecut.com First place winner DJ Le Clown from France will receive a laptop for his remix ‘Xmas in New York City,’ embedded here. Second Place winner Jata Haan from the Netherlands will receive a digital camcorder for her remix, ‘Composition.’ Third Place winner Ricardo Carrion from Switzerland will receive a digital media player for his remix ‘Remix Culture II.’ Here’s what Total Recut Video had to say about the event: Those who submitted videos… more
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Knight Batten Awards for Innovation showcase public media innovators
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 12, 2008
On Wednesday July 10th at the National Press Club, in collaboration with J-Lab, the Knight Foundation presented eight awards for excellence in media innovation. Center for Social Media staffers were awed by the hard work, creativity and innovation of the winners. Wikiscanner, which won the top award of $10,000, was launched in 2007 and allows users to review edits made on Wikipedia. The information available on Wikiscanner is vast, but if you’re simply curious to check out the /wired.reddit.com/wikidgame/?s=top/”> “most salacious edits” you can do that. Wikiscanner users who find strange edits are encouraged to write an article about it… more
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Remixing the RNC
Posted by Alison Hanold on Sep 8, 2008
In June Stephen Colbert viewed McCain’s delivery of a speech in front of a green screen as a request for mashup artists and remixers to “make McCain exciting.” (A green screen for those of you less tech- savvy is a mashup-makers dream come true, allowing artists to add a backdrop of nearly anything they can dream up, or rather “mash up.”) The result was a collection of funny, poignant, and often critical videos drawing attention to how out of touch McCain is with online culture. It is no surprise then that remixers have risen to the challenge of remixing the… more
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A Peek Under the Hood of the NPR API
Posted by John Tynan on Aug 28, 2008
Public broadcasting is in a moment of experimentation, moving beyond traditional broadcast platforms and structures and trying to reach publics where they live and work, through issues that they care about. Large structural innovations—like the release of the NPR application programming interface (API) in late July—are combining with experimentation by stations, staffers and audiences to create new uses for public media content. An open API is a wonderful thing for making content public: it provides a simple way to query an online database and extract things from it for display. An open API allows anyone to access, reuse, and “mash… more
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“Let’s Go Crazy” lawsuit results in fair use victory
Posted by Alison Hanold on Aug 27, 2008
In the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video,a team of legal experts and media scholars judged the incidental use of copyrighted material to be an eligible form of fair use. It seems that the courts agree. In a recent lawsuit filed by Universal Music against a woman who posted a video of her child running around her house while the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” played in the background, a federal judge ruled that copyright owners should consider fair use before filing any copyright infringement complaints. Below is more from Wired.com: The 10-page decision (.pdf) came… more
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A New Look for the Website
Posted by Claire Darby on Aug 25, 2008
You might have noticed that our website is looking a little bit different these days. In the next few months, we will be conducting a major re-evaluation and re-design of the website, but in the meantime, we’ll be making some small tweaks to the current layout and design. Please forgive the small shifts and changes, and we hope you’ll share with us your thoughts (in the comment section below) about how we can make the new site even more innovative, exciting and interesting! more
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Fair Use Muscle-Flexing in Academia, over Kids’ Fashion Ads
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Aug 20, 2008
Colleague Chris Boulton, a student of the moral implications of popular culture, is also a warrior for the copyright rights of new creators. He’s among the supporters of the SPARC Author Addendum; created by Creative Commons and SPARC, it’s a clause attached to the license academics sign with any publishing house that allows the authors to retain certain key rights (rights usually denied by publishers) and ensure a broader distribution of their work. Whereas usually these publishers are absolutely rigid, Chris and his fellow authors report that they just got the publisher of an academic journal to agree to the… more
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Pubcasters and community engagement
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Aug 18, 2008
Whether you’re in public broadcasting or not, it’s worth it to take a look at the just-posted remarks of National Center for Outreach director Maria Alvarez Stroud on trends in community engagement (made at the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference), are fascinating. She takes note of several hot trends, including corporate social responsibility, and says, “One of public broadcasting’s greatest assets is our foundation of rich and varied relationships with citizens. While corporations may be seizing community engagement as an opportunity to sell, it is our job after all is to keep it real, to keep it focused on… more
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DRP beta tests environmental public media for developing countries
Posted by Jasmine Touton on Aug 12, 2008
Newsflash: Swedish-based CleanCook designs a stove that burns on ethanol from molasses instead of gas. Scientists create an enzyme spray to harden a dirt road, eliminating the need for asphalt. Kids can now swing and spin on merry-go-rounds, generating enough power for an entire village. Sound like good news? All of these environmental successes are happening right now. A new project by Developing Radio Partners (DRP) hopes to bring citizens of developing countries this “news-you-can-use” via FM radio in order to improve quality of living and efficiency of resources. DRP is a nonprofit that seeks to better communities by helping… more
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New CSM field report: How well did “Why Democracy?” collaboration work?
Posted by Greg Fitzpatrick on Aug 7, 2008
In 2008, the Center for Social Media is producing a series of field reports analyzing innovative public media projects. This third installment in the series demonstrates the opportunities and challenges that come with engaging publics on a worldwide scale. “Why Democracy?” is an ambitious and ongoing international public broadcasting collaboration designed to spur a global conversation. The project was built around the coordinated broadcast of a core of 10 feature-length documentary films, each of which present views on democracy in various cultural and political contexts. Among these award-winning films is Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Darkside—the 2008 Oscar winner for… more
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Political Remixers and Fair Use Best Practices
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jul 10, 2008
I just had an invigorating talk with amazing New York remix artist Jonathan McIntosh, who is rapidly circulating the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to fellow artists. (He was in Chicago working with high school kids at Mindy Faber’s Fair Use Remix Institute, who were the first–ever group to put the Code to use. I also got to speak with them, via Skype.) Jonathan, who curated a section on political remixes for the DIY conference, believes that political remixers badly need the Code of Best Practices, because they want their work to circulate widely as… more
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Announcing the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jul 7, 2008
Remixes, mashups, fan tributes and other creative work burgeoning in online video often use copyrighted material without permission or payment. When is it fair to do so? In many cases, creators can employ fair use, a key feature of copyright law. Today marks the release of the Center’s newest publication, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Our latest effort in promoting fair use practices among media makers, the code focuses on the still-evolving world of online video, and will help to protect creators from automatic censorship that results from copyright filtering. The Code of Best… more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Incidental Use
Posted by Claire Darby on Jul 3, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM: I’m editing a documentary about an aspiring young football player. An interview occurs in a hotel room, where he happens to be watching an NFL game on broadcast TV. In referencing the Documentary Filmmaker’s Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use—in particular the section about capturing copyrighted media in the process of filming something else and the section on when the captured content doesn’t constitute the scene’s primary focus of interest—I feel comfortable that when the TV and the game appear in the background, it’s fair use. But when the filmmaker captured close-up material of the copyrighted… more
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Stephen Colbert makes McCain exciting with fair use
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jun 27, 2008
On June 3, 2008, the day that Barack Obama became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic party, Republican presidential candidate John McCain gave a speech to a small group of followers in front of a green screen. The next day, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert declared this a challenge from McCain to edit the images on that green screen in order to “make him seem interesting.” Practically a national call to expand fair use. Colbert’s challenge sparked a quickly growing and often outstandingly creative meme, known as the “Make McCain Exciting” project. This meme offers a strong argument for fair… more
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Recut at the NCMR
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jun 13, 2008
I had the great pleasure of presenting at the National Conference for Media Reform this past weekend, on a panel called “Copyright Wars: Will Filtering Censor Free Speech and Kill Net Neutrality?” Joining me on this panel were Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge, Robert Millis of Hudson Street Media, and Elizabeth Stark of the MIT Free Culture Group. We discussed the effects of filtering video for copyright infringements on the evolution of online video, and how net neutrality can protect its future. This culture of online video is explored in Recut, Reframe, Recycle, which demonstrates how new culture grows from… more
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Fair Use Question on Using Clips in Public Radio
Posted by Maura Ugarte on May 30, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM, I’m a reporter for public radio. Is it “fair use” to use a short clip from a TV show or film in order to make a point in a given story, even if I’m not commenting directly on the clip? If so, what is the maximum amount of material I am allowed to use of a given TV show or film. My understand is that if 10% or less of the story is devoted to that material, it’s “fair use.” Is that true? Thanks, -Sean ANSWER: There is no “10 per cent rule,” unfortunately. The question always… more
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YouTomb draws attention to YouTube copyright takedowns
Posted by Alison Hanold on May 21, 2008
In an effort to explore the nature of fair use violations on the web, MIT Free Culture, a student organization at MIT, has created YouTomb, a website the regularly scans YouTube and posts information (but not the videos themselves) about clips that are taken down due to “copyright infringement.” MIT Free Culture claims that the website was created to “shed light on YouTube’s practices, to educate the general public on the relevant copyright issues, and to provide helpful resources to users who have had their videos wrongfully taken down.” In addition to the name and a thumbnail of the videos,… more
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UGC uses Hollywood archetypes to support Obama
Posted by Alison Hanold on May 5, 2008
This election season has seen a surge of commentary from the User Generated Content community, and Obama supporters have taken to comparing him to Hollywood hero archetypes. Below are some great examples of pieces that rely on the principles of fair use for their commentary in the political sphere. Here is a video titled “The Empire Strikes Baracky.” This video likens Obama to Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo, and positions Hillary Clinton as what is often considered to be the most evil character in film history, Darth Vader. The video attempts to draw a comparison in the story lines in… more
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Filmmaker as Voice of Civil Society: Leo Eaton on America at a Crossroads
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 29, 2008
Our good friend Leo Eaton, a veteran public affairs and public broadcasting producer, writes in his annual letter to the field about how he sees the role of the documentarian. He also talks about the role of public broadcasting, and shares a revealing inside story that shows how embattled the notion of civil discourse on television is: I was series producer for the epic PBS current-affairs series America at a Crossroads that took over an entire week of prime-time programming (12 hours) back in April of last year. In spite of all the political controversy surrounding the gestation of a… more
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Good News on Fair Use and Frame Grabs
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 29, 2008
For the last 15 years, film scholars have been asserting their fair use rights to reproduce stills and frame grabs of films and videos they discuss in their work. They’ve been helped by a clear statement of their rights created by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Now, Kristin Thompson, who as president of SCMS in 1993 guided the creation of that statement, has assessed in her blog what has happened since. The news is all good: Scholars have used their rights, there have been no lawsuits, and related case law (especially the Bill Graham Archives case) has reinforced… more
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HotDocs and Copyright Balancing
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 28, 2008
At HotDocs on April 21, an international panel showcased the importance of exercising the balancing features of copyright, even in countries where fair use does not exist. Canadian filmmaker Brett Gaylor, who’s making a film called Basement Tapes: The Making of a Pirate Movie, explained how he’s encouraging others to contribute material to his “Open Source Cinema” project. Gaylor argues that copyright understanding constricts creativity. His film in progress exposes the enormous creativity unleashed in mashups, remixes, and sampling. It uses the balancing features of Canadian copyright law, called fair dealing, to display such work legally within the film, which… more
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Political videos utilizing fair use
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 14, 2008
The usage of viral videos as a form of public media has grown rapidly in recent years, and political videos are no exception. During this evolution, political videos have begun quoting each other, very often utilizing fair use principles in order to provide commentary about other political commentators. Take for example “Hillary 2.0.” This video by Hugh Atkin adopts the format of videos by the group Anonymous (another fascinating internet emergence – read this post from Henry Jenkins’ blog to learn more about it). It suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is a machine that, prompted by the success of videos… more
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Fair Use Goes International: Israel
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 9, 2008
The highlight of my trip to the high-energy, high-touch DocAviv Documentary Film Festival was an open workshop on copyright and documentary, attended by about 35 filmmakers and a few lawyers. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but Israeli documentary filmmakers are just as frustrated and confused as U.S. makers used to be about what copyrighted material they must license and what they can just use. They’re just as eager to figure it out, and they’ve suddenly become poster children for fair use outside the U.S. Israeli law was just changed to incorporate U.S.-style fair use. “We don’t yet know how courts… more
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Avian Flu watch on Flickr
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 4, 2008
A new watch pool on Flickr allows the public to follow the Avian Flu pandemic and to share information and news through images. The project is an example of the growing role that new web 2.0 tools hold in informing the public on important news from around the globe. Our research and focus on public media here at the Center for Social Media is important in understanding how society is evolving in its usage of media for public knowledge and action. You can read more about this in our Public Media FAQ. You can view the pool at http://flickr.com/groups/influenza/pool/ more
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WAM! showcases new directions in feminist and activist media
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 1, 2008
This weekend I had the great pleasure to attend the Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) Conference on the campus of MIT. While there, I met an impressive array of young activists and experienced professionals who use media (magazines, blogs, comics, radio, documentaries) to draw attention to their causes. align=”right”>The conference featured Keynote Speakers Helen Thomas, the first woman officer of the National Press Club and the first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and Haifa Zangana, a novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime. The conference featured sessions focused on making high impact… more
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Public Media—Read All About It
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 3, 2008
The first book chapter to emerge from the Future of Public Media research done at the Center is now in circulation. Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation, edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) includes several essays on the challenges of developing public media in the digital, participatory era. For instance, Nick Couldry talks about how media and political representation are tightly joined. Mark Deuze discusses commercialization of the digital environment, and Josh Lauer cautions us to see current practices in data-mining as new ways to turn consumers into cash cows. Katja… more
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Fair Use on Trial, and Knowledge Wins
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 3, 2008
Chicago filmmaker Floyd Webb wanted to make a movie about a colorful martial arts figure, who called himself Counte Dante (http://johnkeehan.blogspot.com/). The grandmaster of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, William V. Aguiar III, tried to stop him by blocking his access to images of Counte Dante and material from his training video. But Webb had attended an Independent Feature Project panel discussion of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. (IFP was a signatory and co-author of the document, which was facilitated by the Center and the Washington College of Law.) Webb knew he had fair use… more
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Remixing Remixes
Posted by Alison Hanold on Feb 18, 2008
While researching videos for Recut, Reframe, Recycle, I was often struck by the meta verse that exists in the user generated content world. Videos that remix are often being remixed, and the dialogue is ever expanding. The Dramatic Chipmunk meme, for example, is an interesting phenomenon. While conducting our research for Recut, we found that there were over 92 remixes of the “original video” (which was actually a remix of a Japanese television show.) Here is the original video: The meme is continuing. I recently came across the Dramatic Lemur: The recent viral success of Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” video… more
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Can the Public Catalog the Public’s Library?
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jan 31, 2008
The “wisdom of crowds” logic has struck the Library of Congress, in a good way. The nation’s library (linked here) is now asking members of the public to identify and tag—on commercial site Flickr—thousands of public domain photographs in its collection. This attempt to use crowdsourcing to expand the value of resources that belong to the public at large is one worth watching. more
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Sundance 2008—What’s Public and What’s Just Advocacy?
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jan 31, 2008
This year’s Sundance Film Festival was chock-full of activist films, wearing their passion and conviction on their sleeves. There was I.O.U.S.A., Patrick Creadon’s travelogue of a small, conservative-tilting band of accountants (including the U.S. Comptroller General) on a nationwide tour to wake us up to the crisis of deficit spending. There was Flow: for Love of Water, Irena Salina’s alarming film about the poisoning of the world’s water supply and the counter-productive schemes of privatized water corporations to manage it. There was Fields of Fuel, Josh Tickell’s paean to biodiesel as a solution to our oil addiction. And there was… more
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Shifting It Around – ShiftSpace Challenges Content Ownership and Distribution
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jan 23, 2008
The internet promises an open information environment, but with control of much online content held by individual website owners, the true “democratization” of information is stymied. A new tool called ShiftSpace is looking to change this by allowing users to add original meta-layers, or “Shifts,” on top of existing websites, helping to craft a fluid public space where users can contribute original content and commentary. By pressing the [shift] and [space] keys, users can see and create new content and commentary. ShiftSpace offers a variety of tools, including the basic ”Notes” and ”Highlights,” which allow users to comment on website… more
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Fair Use Goes International
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jan 17, 2008
American creators who produce for the international marketplace—and that means most documentarians these days—complain that fair use doesn’t cross national borders gracefully. They’re right. But American-style fair use—the right to use some copyrighted material without permission or payment, when the public’s gain is greater than private loss (centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse)—is becoming more and more popular internationally. Israel has just passed legislation reforming its copyright law (read Hebrew? Here it is: http://www.knesset.gov.il/privatelaw/data/17/3/196_3_1.rtf. If not, the English is at http://www.tau.ac.il/law/members/birnhack/IsraeliCopyrightAct2007.pdf) . It has lifted entire the U.S. fair use language. It has then gone one important step further, avoiding the onerous and counter-productive legal… more
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Online Video and Copyright in Vegas
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jan 7, 2008
By Pat Aufderheide, Center Director The International Consumer Electronics Show, a huge and sprawling conference that takes up a major chunk of Las Vegas real estate every year, is primarily about the business of gadgets. But right underneath the froth about the latest Wii are big issues of culture and power. The subject of digital rights management (DRM)—techniques used by contentholders to control access to their content—is one of the hottest. Peter Jaszi of the Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and I had the privilege of presenting our research, Recut, Reframe, Recycle at the… more
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New Study Shows Mashups and Remixes Could Be Using Copyrighted Material Lawfully
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jan 1, 2008
When college kids make mashups of Hollywood movies, are they violating the law? Not necessarily, according to the latest study on copyright and creativity from the Center and American University’s Washington College of Law. The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, shows that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving… more
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Internationalization of Fair Use at Sheffield Film Festival
Posted by Bree Bowman on Dec 3, 2007
By Pat Aufderheide, reporting on a panel she chaired at the Sheffield Film Festival on international issues in licensing for documentary films. Licensing can become private censorship, if filmmakers are kept from quoting critically important work to make their own. On the panel, producer Julie Goldman spoke about the astonishing rapidity of the adoption and success of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in the U.S. filmmaker Michael McMahon described filmmakers’ work to reform Canadian copyright law to expand “fair dealing.” Italian filmmaker Gioia Avvantaggiato described a growing European movement to assert the “right of quotation.” Lawyer Matthew Cummins,… more
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Right wing politicians claim fair use in political campaigns
Posted by Alison Hanold on Nov 13, 2007
Right wing bloggers and MoveOn recently joined forces to protest Fox News Channel after the network sent cease and desist letters to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. These cease and desist letters came after Mr. McCain used footage from a Fox News clip in one of his campaign advertisements. The advertisement uses 19 seconds of a 90 minute debate Mr. McCain’s lawyers claim he is within the rights of Fair Use. Learn more about it here. more
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Electronic Frontier Foundation Guidelines bring common sense to online video content protection
Posted by Bree Bowman on Oct 30, 2007
The Center has endorsed a sensible and much-needed set of guidelines from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for managing the use of copyrighted material in online video. Online video has become territory for First Amendment brawls, as content companies have demanded “takedowns” of videos that use some copyrighted material—even when it might be perfectly legal to do so under fair use. The EFF guidelines bring back a little common sense into the process of assessing what is and isn’t fair to freedom of speech under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by establishing best practices that include: Tweaking service providers’ content… more
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The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy - the Center’s new report explains how.
Posted by Bree Bowman on Sep 27, 2007
By Ann Williams On Tuesday, September 25, the Center for Social Media, in partnership with the Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) and the Media Education Lab of Temple University, announced the release of its newest publication, The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy. The publication, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is the first step in an effort to develop standards for educators who continue to experience uncertainty, and often fear, when making decisions about what media is “safe” to use in their classrooms. Roughly 60 teachers, legal… more
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Fair Use and the Numbers
Posted by Bree Bowman on Sep 18, 2007
By Pat AufderheideLarge content holders, such as the movie studios and music companies, have spent a lot of money over the years and supported the Copyright Alliance to issue reports showing that the American economy (and public culture) depends on tightly guarded copyright ownership rules. Now other economic interests are fighting fire with fire. The Computer & Communications Industry Association has sponsored a report showing that “fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws are responsible for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States” (http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/uploads/1/FairUseStudy-Sep12.pdf). That number is substantially bigger than the Copyright Alliance’s claims that… more
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Major insurers all accept Fair Use!
Posted by Bree Bowman on Aug 1, 2007
Fair Use claims are now accepted by the four major U.S. insurance companies for errors-and-omissions insurance of fair use claims (AIG, MediaPro, ChubbPro, and OneBeacon). The companies’ acceptance of these claims is perhaps the best gauge of the adoption of fair use in general, and the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in particular, since insurance companies are both the ultimate gatekeepers for television documentary and also historically cautious to adopt practices that involve risk. Major insurers are now newly interested in projects relying on fair use, with all requiring a legal letter of opinion about its principles. The… more
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New Copyright and Fair Use Project Announced!
Posted by Ann Williams on Aug 1, 2007
American University’s Center for Social Media and Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property are undertaking a multifaceted project. “Copyright and Fair Use in Participatory Media,” to promote standards for the use of copyrighted materials in user-generated media that is broadcast over the internet. This project builds on the two organizations’ success in helping to establish “best practices” for fair use by documentary filmmakers. Nonprofessional, online video now accounts for a sizeable portion of all broadband traffic, with much of the work weaving in copyrighted material. “We’re pretty much a mixed-media generation,” one student told American University researchers. A new… more
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Think you don’t need Fair Use? Guess again!
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jul 23, 2007
A recent article by Elizabeth Nolan in AFF’s Doublethink newsletter highlights the increasingly hazy distinction between what is and is not considered to be copyright infringement among user-generated content, and draws attention to the growing need for clearly-cut guidelines for the appropriate use of copyrighted materials. The fair use doctrine, which is outlined in the Copyright Act, presents provisions by which copyrighted material can be used freely, but these circumstances are very particular – the code does not cover a full spectrum of use, and the distinction between what is and isn’t fair use is confusing. The article recounts the… more
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Success of the Statement of Best Practices!
Posted by Maura Ugarte on Jun 6, 2007
Since the Statement’s release in November of 2005, several exciting and important changes have happened in the doc filmmaking world: gatekeepers are paying attention! Four of the seven national errors and omissions insurers now issue fair use coverage if a lawyer says that the use is within the terms of the Statement. ITVS endorses it, WGBH gives the Statement out to their producers, and PBS has shared it with all general counsels and general managers in its network. For a complete list of industry changes as a result of the Statement of Best Practices, go to http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/success_of_the_statement_of_best_practices . more
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Two Fair Use Online Forums!
Posted by Maura Ugarte on Jun 5, 2007
Over the last two weeks, the Center participated in two online forums on fair use. OneWorld co-hosted Ask the Experts! (http://us.oneworld.net/section/us/asktheexperts/fairuse) with us the week of May 11th; we received over 30 great questions from all kinds of media-makers about fair use and copyright issues. Over the next week, the Center is also participating in a D-Word forum on the same topic. D-Word is an online forum and community of documentary filmmakers which hosts panel discussions on issues surrounding their craft. You have to sign up to the forum to get access to it, but anyone can contribute to the… more
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Copyright at the International Communications Association meeting
Posted by Site Administrator on Jun 4, 2007
By Pat Aufderheide At the International Communications Association annual conference in San Francisco at the end of May — thousands of communications scholars from all over the world! — we got to raise a question that affects both media scholars and anyone making media about our world: what’s fair in quoting from copyrighted material? This problem has hit media literacy scholars hard, since their core job is analyzing popular culture. And the problems of media literacy scholars are increasingly shared by anyone who wants to teach critical approaches to communication in any discipline. At an afternoon panel, Pat Aufderheide discussed… more
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Universities in the Digital Age at the Berkman Conference - Issues of Copyright
Posted by Site Administrator on Jun 4, 2007
By Pat Aufderheide The Berkman biannual Internet & Society conference this year was a chance to brainstorm about the university in a digital age. While industry representatives wanted universities to put their emphasis on stopping peer-to-peer music and video activities by students (they nibble away at media companies’ profit models), university librarians, administrators, scholars and teachers by and large thought the emphasis should be elsewhere. They wanted it to be on how academic freedom can best be expressed in a digital era. One sore spot: copyright confusion about the quoting of copyrighted material. Berkman scholar (and multiple award-winning book author)… more
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Unauthorized: The Copyright Conundrum in Participatory Video
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 25, 2007
Suppose you’re running an online video platform, and people start uploading video that uses other people’s work. How should unauthorized use of other people’s work be treated in this new environment? Last month, the Center for Social Media and American University’s law school brought together executives from online video platforms in both commercial and noncommercial media with lawyers and scholars, to discuss how to manage unauthorized use. The group found alarming recent moves to create automated “bot” services to hunt down and eliminate copyrighted material; after all, many unauthorized uses are entirely legal and fair. Stamping out all uses of… more
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Remix Culture: The Movie
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 25, 2007
Do you wonder what’s really fair when you’re making a mashup or a remix? So does everybody else. he rules are still being written for remix culture, and you could help write them. Take a look at the Center’s new video, made by our own Dan Jones, at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/videos/remix_culture/. It’s a great compilation of some of the Youtube “classics” from the last couple of years. Which of these uses of other people’s work do you think is fair? We think the principles in the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use are an interesting place to start thinking. more
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Remix Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Confusing
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 25, 2007
Worry, worry, worry. That’s what happens, it seems, when college students upload video to online platforms. They care about copyright, and would like to own their own work and respect that of others. They just don’t understand their own First Amendment rights or know how to comply with copyright law. That’s what the Center’s new study, The Good, the Bad, and the Confusing, shows. And in this case, confusion directly affects creativity, because people sometimes make creative decisions based on misinformation. Read it and let us know—does this strike a chord? more
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Another Insurer for Fair Use
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 25, 2007
Chubb has now joined the group of insurers that recognize fair use claims for documentary filmmakers. These insurers are depending on the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use to make their judgments (they want a lawyer to verify the filmmaker’s decision that the use is within the Statement’s principles). This is a big step forward, since for years before the Statement was issued, documentary filmmakers had not been able to get insurance for these fair uses. more
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New Fair Use Research on Media Literacy—Join the group
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Feb 26, 2007
It was a thrill to participate in the workshop on media literacy and fair use at the Beyond Broadcast conference [beyondbroadcast.net] last weekend. Henry Jenkins (MIT), Bryan Baker (Temple U) and I brainstormed with about 25 creative media literacy teachers and makers—media arts center managers, profs, after-school programs leaders, filmmakers, bloggers and more. Bryan is part of a team led by Renee Hobbs [renee.hobbs@temple.edu] at Temple’s Media Education Lab. They are exploring just what creative problems media literacy teachers and makers face, given what they understand of the law. This research will inform the next step—creating a best-practices document that… more
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MediaPro also uses Fair Use Best Practices Statement for insurance policies
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Feb 24, 2007
Now MediaPro has joined AIG as insurance companies using the Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use as a guideline to accept fair use in its errors-and-omissions insurance policies for documentary filmmakers. MediaPro will depend on Stanford Law School’s judgment that documentary filmmakers’ uses are within the Statement’s principles and conditions. This is great news for documentary filmmakers, and provides new opportunities for insurers as well. more
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Insurer accepts fair use claims!
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Feb 13, 2007
A major errors and omissions insurer, National Union, a member company of AIG, is accepting fair use claims based on the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, when supported by an appropriate lawyer’s letter. This is an extraordinary demonstration of the power of this best-practices approach to making the fair-use option in copyright law useable again. “This is great news,” said filmmaker Alex Gibney, who recently got insurance with such claims recognized. In only a year, the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use has changed the clearance practices of documentary filmmakers. The Statement was… more
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Yahoo and Copyright in Belgium
Posted by Site Administrator on Feb 6, 2007
A recent article details the struggles that Yahoo has faced regarding providing links to archived stories found in a group of Belgian newspapers. The newspapers claim that providing such an archive is an infringement of copyright laws. The article states that Yahoo ” ‘respects the copyright of content owners’ and said it would ‘respond in an appropriate manner’ to the complaint.” Yahoo, like Google, has cached links to articles that the newspapers would usually sell for access. This is an issue that the US newspaper industry has faced as well, and presents challenges to both consumers and the industry alike.… more
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Gossip columnist challenged on ‘fair use’
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Dec 19, 2006
“Gossip gangstar” Perez Hilton is being sued by paparazzi photo agency X17 Inc. for his use of over 50 photos on his Hollywood gossip blog, according to the LA Times, “Perez Hilton takes their best shots.” From the article, “If it turns out that what he does is copyright infringement — rather than a fair use of newsworthy images, as Hilton’s attorney claims — it would not only put a serious crimp in the photo-driven field of gossip blogs, but possibly create new case law. ‘The effect would be to eliminate the ability to comment on and transform photographs under… more
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Fair use question about access to footage
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Dec 1, 2006
Want your questions on Fair Use Answered?? Check out the new Fair Use FAQ! Due to the overwhelming number of inquires about our work on fair use and the Statement of Best Practices, we have compiled a list of our most fr equently asked questions. In addition, we hope to share a new question with you every month via our fair use blog. This month’s question is about fair use and access to footage. Q: Mark asks, “I’m under the impression—perhaps no longer accurate -that if I record footage, say an opponent’s spot or news footage off the air, in… more
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Online Content Gets Legal
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 31, 2006
It’s no secret that online video sites are plagued these days with material uploaded by users with no rights to do so, but not Revver! If you haven’t checked it out yet, Revver allows you to upload videos and make money from advertising that follows the video as it travels around the internet. But, to be sure that users aren’t making money off of someone else’s stuff, Revver staff go through all the content that is uploaded. While it is great that Revver is trying out a business model that allows content creators to monetize their material, Revver has also… more
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More Threats Against Fair Use
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 24, 2006
David Giacalone edits a great blog, shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress, out of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society that deals primarily with lay-people taking responsibility for their own understanding of the law . He writes, “Our courts have become costly, complicated, lawyer-centered bureaucracies, rather than the accessible, client-centered dispute resolution centers they should be.” This idea is at the heart of the Center’s Fair Use project - documentary filmmakers take responsibility for understanding what is fair use within their field, articulate it, have it reviewed by a team of legal experts and then pass along their shared… more
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LA Boy Scouts to Earn Copyright Badge
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 23, 2006
That’s right. Via Yahoo! Movie News, the MPAA is supplying Los Angeles Boy Scouts with curriculum “in the basics of copyright law and learn how to identify five types of copyrighted works and three ways copyrighted materials may be stolen.” I wonder if they teach about ‘fair use’ as well? It is part of copyright law (click on Chapter 1, Section 107) but there is no mention of it in the article. more
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Buy the Copyright to Set it Free?
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 23, 2006
Via BoingBoing, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales asks “Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license?” Ideas? more
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Content Owner Sues Video Hosts
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 20, 2006
Dawn C. Chmielewski reported in the LA Times that Universal Music Group has filed suit against two video hosting sites, Grouper and Bolt, in an effort to stem unlicensed use of copyright protected material. If you’ve visited any of the video sites, you have probably seen the multitudes of amatuer videos made by folks imitating their favorite artists, and yes, people also upload content recorded straight from music television. Universal Sues Video Sharing Websites explores the potential business ramifications, especially given the new YouTube/Google merger. Our own Peter Jaszi, co-director of the Center’s fair use work, is quoted, “the implications… more
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Google & YouTube, Great! What about copyright?
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 18, 2006
It’s no secret that YouTube, as a company, has had to deal with the ramifications of users posting material that they have no rights to upload. So, when Google and YouTube announced their merger, it should be no surprise that analysts are curious how Google will handle copyright issues. A recent Wall Street Journal Online post is a discussion between Harvard law professor John Palfrey and economist Stan Liebowitz. While both acknowledge the need for Google to deal with actual and potential copyright infringement so as to avoid potentially crippling lawsuits, they disagree on what role ‘fair use’ plays and… more
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Titicut Follies on Google Video
Posted by Agnes Varnum on Oct 6, 2006
Cinema Minima reported today that Frederick Wiseman’s seminal documentary Titicut Follies has been posted on Google Video. A quick look at the Google post reveals user “MK ULTRA 1967” has posted the whole film, and it does not appear to be Wiseman or his representatives. Cinema Minima asks “has this instance of the film been placed online with the permission of the copyright holder — which in this case, appears to be the filmmaker’s own company, Zipporah Films — or, under the ‘Fair Use’ exemption provided under the U. S. Copyright?” Asking this question shows a complete lack of understanding… more
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Thoughts on Fair Use at The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, Paris June 2006, by Gordon Quinn
Posted by Bree Bowman on Sep 29, 2006
The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue hosted a meeting in Paris bringing together consumers and creators from around the world around intellectual property issues. I was there making a presentation on the American Fair Use part of U. S. copyright law and the struggle led by the Center for Social Mediar to reassert our right to use it in our creative work. I was presenting the Center and my organization Karemquin films. It was the first time I was able to get a sense of how other countries deal with these issues. But most exciting to me was to come together… more
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Conversations regarding IP and DRM, by Tony Shawcross
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jun 3, 2006
A few weeks back at the Beyond Broadcast Conference, amongst various conversations regarding IP and DRM, I told Pat Aufderheide I’d contribute to this fledgling blog when I attended the Digital IP Summit in Denver (which ended today). I planned to follow through on my word, but to tell the truth, there wasn’t much to report on. The first annual Digital IP Summit was held at the BEAUTIFUL new Cable Center at DU, with high-ups from HBO, Turner, Time Warner, Cox, and others in attendance, I was ready to be enlightened. The audience was likewise full of old-school industry folks,… more
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