The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has posted a free basic video on copyright at http://216.183.190.29/. It’s geared towards corporate clients, but I think that it’s pretty good for others too: cute, catchy, and more balanced than I had expected. It provides brief explanations of copyright, public domain, and fair use.
I posted a link rather than embedding the video in this post, because their license agreement allows for posting on a corporate intranet, but seems to disallow including it here. The other aspect that I found discouraging is that they didn’t include a publication date. Strictly speaking, this may not be necessary, because they are licensing the video, which trumps copyright, but of all places, the CCC should understand the importance of a publication date and should include it.
Freya Anderson Copyright resources copyright, education
Fair use is one of the most important concepts in the day-to-day implementation of copyright law, and yet, by its very nature, it is a difficult one for many people to understand. We have four factors, which are sort of equal, but sort of not, and there are altogether too few cases that are unambiguous. Most people I know who are into copyright spend a fair amount of time explaining fair use, working out fair use analyses, or arguing those analyses with others.
In the October 21, 2009, Slate article, “Is there ‘Hope’ for Shepard Fairey?” Tim Wu answers the question, “How does fair-use law work, anyway?” without once stating the four factors of fair use. Does he oversimplify? Perhaps. Wu’s approach is a first for me, but I think his explanation, which focuses on “categories” of use, may be really helpful in providing a different perspective. Maybe it will even help turn on some copyright lightbulbs.
Freya Anderson Fair use copyright, Fair use
