Fantastic report on “fair use” in film

Posted on December 7, 2005 by Lessig

The Center for Social Media has released a fantastic report on “fair use” in film. The aim of the report is to try to state, and hence establish, norms or “best practices” that should govern “fair use” for film. This is an important effort and Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi deserve thanks for the hard work pulling the team together to produce this. Download the report here.

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5 Responses to Fantastic report on “fair use” in film

  1. Rob Myers says:
    December 7, 2005 at 3:49 pm

    The Free Expression Policy Project report on fair use is also out now:

    “Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control”
    – from the Free Expression Policy Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law
    http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/WillFairUseSurvive.pdf

  2. three blind mice says:
    December 8, 2005 at 5:42 am

    “Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control”

    from the title through the fist few pages, this report appears to argue from the position that “fair use” is a fixed and inviolate set of “rights” instead of a living concept that should – and obviously must – evolve in the face of technological advancement.

    it is more than a little disappointing and sadly ironic to see, in the Brenan center report and in the other “fantastic report” linked by professor lessig, that original authors and artists have so few friends among the academic intelligensia – and so many committed commonsists struggling against them.

    funny. stifling artistic development used to be the game of corporate lawyers and moral crusaders, now it’s de riguer amongst university professors and students.

    squares.

  3. David Wakefield says:
    December 8, 2005 at 10:31 am

    I feel that fair use is an overrated law anyway. There are laws to protect the most common of infringements but that is not to say that indirect or direct influence of a filmmaker goes undetected. the fact is that film makers base there films off works of others just as creative occupation. If one looks to art history for instance, the works of artists like Rembrandt have greatly influenced many artisist who have even tried to mimick his works, yet this serves to further his theories on art. The fact is, if a film maker wants to skip around a copyright protected element, it is simple to do, so why not just do away with all copyright fair use laws and allow film to flourish?

  4. icecow says:
    December 8, 2005 at 11:42 pm

    QUOTE:
    “Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control”

    from the title through the fist few pages, this report appears to argue from the position that “fair use” is a fixed and inviolate set of “rights” instead of a living concept that should – and obviously must – evolve in the face of technological advancement.

    it is more than a little disappointing and sadly ironic to see, in the Brenan center report and in the other “fantastic report” linked by professor lessig, that original authors and artists have so few friends among the academic intelligensia – and so many committed commonsists struggling against them.

    funny. stifling artistic development used to be the game of corporate lawyers and moral crusaders, now it’s de riguer amongst university professors and students.

    squares.

    UNQUOTE

    You are doing a great job at making people think artists are the most selfish, shortsighted people in the world. What are you trying to achieve?

    Everyone [childish] wants their voice heard by millions each day and paid well for it, but no one has the time or money to watch and pay for a million narcissitic clips (er works) a day.

    Can’t you accept that as more artists express themselves the value of the media goes down? Can’t you accept that as more artists succeed and emerge it’s a mathematical certainty that audience sizes will lower?

    The word ‘artist’ is starting to have a really bad conotation: lame-o’s trying to work the system.

    btw, you are trapped in your own unscientific dogmatic convictions.

    How rediculous would it be if only a few people could have conversations on phones and the others got to chose what conversation they listened to and paid to listen? That’s what the dieing, ailing media conglomerates are trying to do to video (and all other digitally transmitted expression).

  5. Paul says:
    December 9, 2005 at 1:28 pm

    It’s a piece of propaganda, not a serious academic study. For example, the authors don’t understand how compulsory licenses work –

    Likewise, legislation
    requiring compulsory licenses for reasonable
    fees would be a way to prevent copyright owners
    from refusing permission because they don’t like
    the content of the borrower’s speech; but they
    assume the need for a license. Fair use works
    on the opposite principle – that it should not
    cost money or require compliance with any
    procedures to make reasonable use of words and
    images that are part of our culture. Fair use is
    irreplaceable precisely because it does not don payment, procedures, or permission.

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