Empowering Media That Matters
Home >> Blog >> Fair Use >> Electronic Frontier Foundation Guidelines bring common sense to online video content protection

Electronic Frontier Foundation Guidelines bring common sense to online video content protection

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 filters to do a better job of distinguishing between Fair Use and infringement
  • Improving the processes for disputing takedowns from rights holders and erroneous filter results, as well as fairly informing users of content takedowns
  • Creating an "escape mechanism" linked directly to content owners for users who are mistakenly accused of infringing copyright (an informational website, dedicated email address to handle requests for reconsideration, etc.)
  • Establishing a streamlined process to "putback" content for which a takedown notice has been retracted


These guidelines represent an excellent platform to address the concerns of rights holders, service providers and users alike and to eliminate the unnecessary confusion that stymies creativity.

The full guidelines can be found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website.