Copyright and Fair Use

This campaign season has been lively, intense, and the inspiration for a wide array of online video. We've spent nearly a year tracking political remix online, and showing how online video creators are exercising Fair Use of copyrighted material in order to create powerful and innovative commentary on the political landscape. The evolution of online video has become nationally relevant with this election season, and to commemorate election day, we have one last video to share.Read more...

Last night's tense exchange between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama marked the end of an extraordinary cycle of debates. The sheer number, combined with the unusual amount of public interest, forced organizers to innovate new forms and provide more openings for interaction.Read more...

The recent pull of Saturday Night Lives' Bailout skit has got us wondering -- why did NBC choose to upload their popular Palin skits on several massive online video platforms (hulu.com, youtube.com) but in the same week, aggressively clean the web of this Bailout skit? Some have argued that this was done in fear that the Bailout skit would sharpen criticism of democrats and therefore hurt Barack Obama's campaign.Read more...

In the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video,a team of legal experts and media scholars judged the incidental use of copyrighted material to be an eligible form of Fair Use. It seems that the courts agree. Read more...