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Fair Use for Presentations?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-can-and-can't-you-do dept.

Fubar asks: "The company I work for provides training 'workshops' to various folks in the finance industry. The folks who give the presentations during the workshops are considering adding short clips from various movies to help illustrate their points. In my searching, I have found evidence that basically seems to suggest the practice COULD be either a) fine or b) illegal. Not exactly the black & white answer I was hoping to find."

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. You forgot other options by dbIII · · Score: 1, Interesting
    ... seems to suggest the practice COULD be either

    (c) Lazy

    (d) If done badly - tasteless, irrelevant and a waste of time. Consider the SCO presentation near the very start of their linux IP claims which contained clips from a James Bond movie. In that presentation it was implied that Darl McBride was in some way similar to James Bond and the linux community was similar to the forces of evil in the movie. A presentation like this may look cool and funny to insiders but to outsiders (who may be in your audience or your entire audience) it just looks like you have completely lost the plot and they may even consider you do not take anything seriously enough to deserve any sort of trust.

    (e) Get completely off the point by association. A clip that shows the point may contain an actor that people associate more with another role and they may think of that other role instead and completely miss the point. A clip from "Much Ado about Nothing" that is relevant may have people thinking of "Matrix" or "The Tall Guy" or whatever depending on who is in the clip.

  2. Re:OK, here's my fair use example by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I make a lot of my points with humor. Jesus told parables, I tell jokes. The goal of either is to make you think. Try it sometime.

    If you're nice to me, maybe I'll tell you the pot roast joke. Guaranteed programmers ROFL, because it's true, but said in a funny way.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  3. Re:OK, here's my fair use example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When good information gets passed around, it usually accumulates useless mutations.

    For example, the grandmother is totally superfluous in that story. The way I heard it, the mother delivers the punchline. No need for the extra stack frame. And there was a lot less crying, too.

    I also think it's interesting that, about 10 years ago, the story would have been considered rather blatantly sexist. Times have changed.