Copyright law is most certainly a hot-button issue in our ever-increasing digital culture. After watching many videos addressing the use of copyrighted materials and what constitutes fair-use, it became more and more clear exactly how blurred the lines truly are as far as using copyrighted materials. Discovering that rights are now in place for documentary makers and musicians to use a piece of a copyrighted material to get their own creative points across was a wonderful discovery.
The explanations covering fair use and copyright law in the classroom were quite helpful. As a teacher, I have used materials like showing short clips from films like The Patriotand Gettysburg to show students what warfare looked like during each films’ respective time period. After reviewing the materials I was relieved to understand that by having created lesson plans that rely on the showing of these materials for students to complete the activities I should still be ok under the policy of fair use. It was somewhat relieving to know that there are guidelines that we as digital content creators and educators can use to decide how we utilize copyrighted materials in our presentations. Albeit the fair use policies are somewhat hazy guidelines to live by, they are, much like the independent filmmakers stated, at least a tangible document that can be cited and read.
After reviewing these many videos and viewpoints of copyright law the singular idea presented from each person speaking on copyright laws was that they are vague laws to live by. To be safe, and to avoid a civil or criminal charge being pressed, a content creator should always try to get permission from the copyright holder if they intend to use or build upon their original copyrighted ideas. Fair use a great step toward protecting the rights of content creators and avoiding a lawsuit for just speaking about another person’s work, but it is not a governing force by any means that is guaranteed to protect the content creator.
My Response
Hey Bryan,
I agree with you that copyright law is vague and blurred, and I too found the videos to be quite helpful. It's true that the safest route is to "always try to get permission from the copyright holder" if one is planning on using copyrighted material; however, I think the whole point of having a "Fair Use" legal exemption from copyright law is to release documentary filmmakers, educators, etc. from having to take the time to license, and perhaps also pay excessive fees to use, copyrighted material. In fact, the document put together by the documentary filmmakers attempting to codify guidelines for Fair Use, was put together to encourage us to utilize Fair Use as a legal defense if need be.
Several individuals in the second part of the "reading" expressed that Fair Use was in danger of the "use it, or lose it" syndrome. I believe they were worried that if Fair Use is not used as a documented legal defense, it will eventually be eliminated. The video we watched called A Fair(y) Use Tale purposely pushed the legal definition of Fair Use in the way they used so many short clips from Disney animated films. In Chapter 5 of the video, they explain why they used Disney material, and that was because Disney is one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to copyright infringement litigation. The filmmakers were clearly taunting Disney - daring Disney to take them to court. Certainly we all have to follow copyright laws; however, we do not have to cower under the intimidation of large corporations that threaten us with lawsuits. That is, we can be confident that we have a legal defense known as Fair Use in our back pocket.
No comments:
Post a Comment