The cherry blossoms are in full bloom in DC, and the Center is in full swing with several upcoming events, a new website under development and lots of news from Future of Public Media and Fair Use, Free Speech.

Media makers are finding ever more creative ways to engage audiences. In this issue, we highlight new resources including Kathryn Montgomery’s “Free Culture, Phase 2” report and Marty Lucas’ video report “Many to Many,” both examine the role of new digital technologies in bringing communities together for shared experiences. There are also several new resources outside the Center, such as the "Bound by Law?", a comic book on fair use by Duke Law School, and online global warming Public Service Announcements at the Environmental Defense website.

I hope that you will explore these new resources, and join the Center at one of the many events in April and May. And if you are a film student or professor, don’t forget about the UFVA Fair Use & Free Speech film contest.

Thank you for your continuing support, and we look forward to bringing you a revamped web portal and community platform in May!

Now available on the Center website, "Many to Many" takes a look at the emerging ‘blogosphere’ - the growing world of Internet self-publishers and citizen journalists and asks what public broadcasters in the US and the UK are doing to use new media tools to interact with their viewers and listeners in innovative ways. The video features interviews with Cara Mertes of the award-winning PBS series POV, and Lucy Hooberman of the BBC’s R&D wing, and a look at NPR program ‘Radio Open Source’ and the Global Voices blogger network. Download at will, use in your classroom, share with friends, and upload it to as many blogs as you like!

Kathryn Montgomery, associate professor in the School of Communication and director of the youth media and democracy project at the Center, last May brought together an eclectic brain trust of 50 young "digital leaders" under 30 years of age who want to create democratic access to art, expression, and governance in a digital age. American University School of Communication is pleased to announce the release of the “Free Culture, Phase 2” conference report, available at the School of Communication.

The report showcases the active and effective organizations and movements represented at the Free Culture, Phase 2 conference. The report includes:

1. conference discussion themes and samples,
2. cultural collaboration or ‘sharing,’
3. additional analysis and commentary, and
4. websites of the organizations represented at the event.

The Center hosts a panel on fair use and contract clearance, reporting on progress in industry practices since the launch of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. Joining Professors Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi will be legendary cinema vérité filmmaker Albert Mayles (also accepting a CINE lifetime achievement award that day), award-winning documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn, and the Independent Television Service’s vice president for distribution, Tamara Gould.

At this year’s Nashville Film Festival, Agnes Varnum, the Center’s outreach coordinator on fair use issues, will join Byron Hurt (Beyond Beats and Rhymes) and lawyer F. Casey Del Casino on a panel about the implications of copyright for freedom of expression.

The Center is co-organizing a conference on the future of public media in an open digital environment titled, “Beyond Broadcast” from May 12-13 at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. This open conference follows on the Center’s initial convening, “Digital Media and the Public Sphere."

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 is an opportunity for innovators and leaders in public media on any platform to meet and find out how others are experimenting.

The Center presented the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, a Media Coalition of Artists of Color in gathering in New York, and in an online salon sponsored by the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.

Both events saw eager audience members scooping up multiple copies of the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use and seeking helping on questions about their own work. Center director Pat Aufderheide presented examples of fair use at SXSW and a participant asked, “What do the lawyers on the panel think about this fair use project?” New York-based attorney Stephen Beers quickly answered that the time for this project has come. The same sentiments permeated the Media Coalition presentation at Tribeca Cinemas that included: Byron Hurt (Beyond Beats and Rhymes), his attorney Lisa Davis of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, PC, and Agnes Varnum, the Center’s outreach coordinator.

In an online salon moderated by Agnes Varnum, Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi addressed NAMAC members of media arts organizations, independent filmmakers, and attorneys in an online salon which elicited an intense discussion around fair use policy issues. Media arts organizations continue to grapple with providing comprehensive information to filmmakers about the wide variety of special circumstances to encounter during the editing process. Jaszi and Aufderheide pointed to a variety of work occurring on other frontiers, such as E&O insurance, orphan works, and foreign rights. However on the fair use issue, Jaszi reassured, “In the handful of cases involving doc filmmaking defendants so far, plausible fair use defenses always have won. There are no exceptions to this generalization.”

Pictured from left: Agnes Varnum, Warrington Hudlin (DVRepulic.org), Byron Hurt, Lisa Davis and Denise Richards (WNET)