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Wu and Cotton mix it up over copyright protection in the digital age

There's a really interesting discussion happening on copyright protections in the new era of YouTube and peer to peer networks. The NY Times organized a debate between Rick Cotton, general counsel of NBC Universal, and Professor Tim Wu from Columbia Law School. You can find it here: bits.blogs.nytimes.com.
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Success of the Statement of Best Practices!

Since the Statement's release in November of 2005, several exciting and important changes have happened in the doc filmmaking world: gatekeepers are paying attention! Four of the seven national errors and omissions insurers now issue Fair Use coverage if a lawyer says that the use is within the terms of the Statement. ITVS endorses it, WGBH gives the Statement out to their producers, and PBS has shared it with all general counsels and general managers in its network. Read more...

Two Fair Use Online Forums!

Over the last two weeks, the Center participated in two online forums on Fair Use. OneWorld co-hosted Ask the Experts! (http://us.oneworld.net/section/us/asktheexperts/fairuse) with us the week of May 11th; we received over 30 great questions from all kinds of media-makers about Fair Use and copyright issues. Over the next week, the Center is also participating in a D-Word forum on the same topic. D-Word is an online forum and community of documentary filmmakers which hosts panel discussions on issues surrounding their craft. Read more...

Freeing the Data in London

How much access should members of the public have to the data and media projects that their tax dollars fund? How about corporations looking to make a buck from government-financed data? Does information really "want to be free," as Stewart Brand famously pronounced more than two decades ago, and if so, who’s going to pay for its production?Read more...

SILVERDOCS 2006

The Center was a proud sponsor this June of SILVERDOCS Documentary Film Festival and Conference in Silver Spring, MD. The Center welcomed guests at a reception, sponsored a conference panel, and released a new report, The New Deal. Attendees at Silverdocs included doc filmmakers and fans, members of a strategic communications institute held by American University and OneWorld US, and many industry types. Read more...