We hope you’re enjoying a beautiful spring. The Center is gearing up for a full slate of conferences and meetings. Upcoming events include the May 3 Women in Film & Video DC’s professional development seminar “Getting the Right Rights” and the May 12-13 Beyond Broadcast, a conference about public media on digital platforms co-sponsored with the Berkman Center at Harvard University.

We’re also re-launching our website this month. The new site takes advantage of current web technologies that permit community building and information sharing. We’re eager to find out how it can help us explore how people are developing media that matters both in traditional and new spaces.

Looking forward!

Getting the Right Rights, May 3
American University, Washington DC
Co-sponsored by Women in Film & Video, this Wednesday One presentation will help you to navigate the rights clearance waters. Thinking about using archival or news footage in your documentary? Hoping you can find that perfect song for a song? Wondering whether a TV or radio playing in the background of your scene or a logo on a character's T-shirt is included under Fair Use? Speakers include Pat Aufderheide, Lauren Cardillo, Laura Possessky, Bonnie Rowan and Dolly Turner. RSVP required, visit: http://www.wifv.org for details.

Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference, May 3
Washington DC
This panel discussion, “The Future of Fair Use,” will address these copyright issues for people creating work in a digital environment. Center director Aufderheide will speak. For many computer professionals, as well as creators working in a digital environment, user rights in copyright have become a critically important issue. More info at: http://www.cfp2006.org

Beyond Broadcast, May 12-13
Harvard Law School, Cambridge MA
Traditional public media - public broadcasting, cable access television, public satellite channels - face a unique opportunity to embrace new participatory web-based media models - podcasting, video blogs, social software - and create a stronger and more vital public service. The conference, open and co-sponsored by the Center, is an opportunity for innovators and leaders in public media on any platform to meet and find out what others are experimenting with. The Center’s latest film, Martin Lucas’ "Many to Many," will be featured. The wiki is open for registration and your contributions and so is the blog!

The Center informed its own members of the controversy, and many of them joined in signing, as did Center director Aufderheide, a public letter to the Smithsonian director Lawrence Small. Small has since clarified the terms of the contract somewhat, and filmmakers, curators, programmers and others continue to ask for further public disclosure; some are demanding a retraction of the deal. The blogosphere is buzzing.

The importance and useability of fair use for filmmakers was featured at the CINE awards in Silver Spring, MD on April 18. CSM director Pat Aufderheide and Washington College of Law Professor Peter Jaszi presented a preview version of the Center’s latest video, “Fair Use and Free Speech in Documentary Film” to a packed audience for a panel on the fair use initiative’s first year.

The video, to be released this month, describes the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices. Documentary filmmaking legend Al Maysles, who was being given a lifetime achievement award, joined them, saying, “What I learned today is going to make possible the release of the DVD of Grey Gardens in the form I wanted.”

On April 25, Center outreach coordinator Agnes Varnum appeared with documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt and attorney F. Casey Del Casino to share the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use at the Nashville Film Festival. The Nashville audience included many songwriters, composers and musician. Hurt summed up his experience, “reading the Center’s Untold Stories report made me realize that I wasn’t alone” in dealing with copyright and fair use issues to make his documentary that examines masculinity in hip-hop culture. Beyond Beats and Rhymes premiered at Sundance this year and will be broadcast on Independent Lens in 2007. ITVS is an official endorser of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.

At New York University April 28-30, Center director Aufderheide spoke at a conference, “Comedies of Fair Use: A Search for Comity in the Intellectual Property Wars,” at New York Institute for the Humanities. The conference, which featured filmmakers, writers, academics and lawyers, explored the need to use the law to defend and expand freedom of expression and promote public media. The model of best practices is now being discussed by, among others, music educators and art educators, as a result of the Center’s fair use work.

On June 19-20 in Paris, filmmaker Gordon Quinn will speak about creators’ need to assert their user rights through fair use and similar clauses in international law, at a Trans-Atlantic Consumers conference, “New Relations between Creative Individuals and Communities, Consumers and Citizens.”

At the Copyright Society of America’s annual conference June 11-13, user rights in copyright will be featured on a panel that will showcase the fair use initiative. As well, the Society’s evening entertainment will feature films that employ fair use.