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'Piracy' is Often Fair Use, Study Says

When homemade videos appear on YouTube bearing snippets of copyrighted works, is it piracy or fair use? Much of what gets tagged as the former is actually the latter, suggests a new study from the Center for Social Media at American University's School of Communication. The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle, says that new forms of creative satire, commentary and other homegrown videos are being inhibited by industry-imposed filtering standards and legal threats that fail to fully consider the boundaries of fair use.

Fair use may be far more relevant than has previously been assumed in discussion of user-generated content, even though the community of online video makers is sprawling and protean. In some cases, these creators use copyrighted material in ways that have long been seen in filmmaking as fair use -- for media critique, for example, or when copyrighted material is incorporated into a moment being documented for another purpose, or for short illustration. In other cases -- in mashups, among others -- video makers may quote extensively. Even extensive uses may well be legal and within fair use under certain circumstances, if analyzed within context.

What is needed, the study concludes, is a blue-ribbon panel of scholars, makers and lawyers to develop a code of best practices around fair use in online video, both to educate new makers and to provide guidance for public and private regulators.

Today’s makers -- feckless, impudent, brash, and extravagant as they often are -- in fact are the pioneers of an emerging media economy and society. Recognition of the importance of fair use, within the copyright law toolkit for cultural creation, is both prudent and forward-looking for those concerned with maintaining an open society.

Download the full PDF of the study here. For further commentary, see EFF's Deeplinks Blog and the Citizen Media Law Project blog.

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on January 4, 2008 at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)