Copyright and Fair Use

Creative geek Andy Baio had a hellish experience with copyright and fair use when he made "Kind of Bloop," a weird and wonderful electronic cover of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. It’s maddening to hear his story, told in a compelling video, of acceding to astonishing payments in an out-of-court settlement. But he’s drawing the wrong lessons from it. Read more...

Fair use is enabling more documentaries, and filmmakers are in the lead of making fair use work for creative practice. The latest evidence is one of the films I savored at SXSW, Our Nixon, by Brian Frye and Penny Lane. 

In this month's fair use question an author explores fair use and public domain in his push to publish a book that uses several long quotes.

Dear CSM,

I’m writing a book that examines the prose of notable American authors published before and directly after the Civil War.  I’d like to quote, in some
cases, several pages. I'm afraid that might exceed permitted quotes--I thought I understood that 400 words is the maximum. Can you help?

Best, Tom  Read more...

Videography, Editing and Writing by Luke Taylor, Natalie Plumb, Bryan Bello and Kenneth Merrill

Legal scholarship lacks a framework for cultural practices, and consequently actual user experiences, that should inform information policy. Just as copyright law is configured to encourage the creation of culture, scholar Julie Cohen argues that the regimes governing information access and use need to take into account how the role of culture shapes social practices online. Read more...

The Consortium of College and University Media Centers (CCUMC) has endorsed the Association of Research Libraries’ Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries.CCUMC members routinely help faculty and staff decide on how to stream video, make digital displays and exhibits, and build digital collections.Read more...