Patricia Aufderheide's Posts

Another major organization has endorsed the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts: The Visual Resources Association (VRA), whose members manage image collections in higher education, museums and archives. 

The prestigious professional association was an early supporter of fair use in the visual arts, with guidelines on using images in teaching and research. Now, it will collaborate with the College Art Association to promote the Code, which CMSI helped to create. Read more...

At the University Film and Video conference in August, the challenging but rewarding relationship between indie filmmakers and public TV was celebrated—by pubtv insiders as well as indies.

 As filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz said in launching the panel discussion, indie filmmakers have a long and sometimes fractious history with public TV, and one that has resulted in more opportunities for makers and more diverse programming. In the 1980s, a decade of continuous and often contentious pressure—for more programming time for indies, who offer the most diverse perspectives and voices on public TV--created the documentary production public TV unit ITVS. Read more...

CILECT North America’s Docu-Day conference opened at American University with a manifesto-like volley from professor emeritus and field leader Michael Rabiger, who asked, “What makes a documentary durable?” His answer: Film art, featuring creative use of elements ranging fr Read more...

Dear CMSI,

I am part of a team in the special collections unit of my university library working on the recently acquired personal archive of a regional artist. We’re hoping to make the correspondence between the artist and various collectors and institutions digitally available. The archive came with a donor’s agreement allowing digital display, but there are a lot of items in the archive that are actually copyrighted to others. So what we want to know is, can we employ fair use here? If so, how?Read more...

Last year, I donated to my local public broadcaster, which had decided to carry my favorite shows, Independent Lens and POV—the two public TV series that carry award-winning, diverse documentaries—at a time I could actually watch them. (That is, at the nationally scheduled time, on Monday nights at 10pm.) And I told them why I was donating.

And so now I’m a member of my local station. Read more...