Disney Video Used to Explain Copyright

Recently a pretty amazing video surfaced that used clips from Disney films to explain copyright law. It was created by Eric Faden of Bucknell University and must have taken an insane amount of time to assemble. Now you have to wonder how long before someone gets sued over it. Also here is a corel cache version as well as a link to the original page.

Comments

Re:Description, please!

[smilindog2000]

It's a short video (about 5 min) composed almost entirely of super-short clips from Disney films. Each clip typically has one or just a few words spoken by a Disney cartoon character, but the words when strung together describe copyright law, and makes a reasonable argument that it should have shorter, rather than longer duration. It also describes fair use. The film starts out with a potential violation, with Disney's film opening (the castle, and tune that goes with it). This was shown as something that can be copyrighted, and clearly does not diminish it's value, so they may be able to argue that it was fair use. I suspect this was done on purpose to pose a challenge to Disney. It ends with full disclosure of the authors, and lists each segment that was borrowed under "fair use". The film says that the original copyright law allowed for only 17 years of protection, but that today the duration is your lifetime plus 70 years for an individual, and over 100 years for a corporation. Personally, I think your works should become public domain after you die, and that corporations should have similar time-periods, let's say about 50 years.

Personally, I hope the authors achieve some success in swaying public opinion in favor of reasonable restrictions on copyright length.

Re:Amazing? Amazingly criminal...

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually there is a fair use doctrine in trademark law, and it's called fair use, but it's quite different from the fair use doctrine of copyright law, which can lead to some confusion if you end up talking about both. Usually you end up having to qualify which one you mean.

I found the quick cuts too jarring to allow me to watch more than a minute of it, but as for the use of the logo in the beginning, he has a decent position. Nominative use is allowed -- how can he say he's not affiliated with Disney if he can't say the name 'Disney' in the disclaimer? But the use of the entire animated logo and music would need to fall under the overall parody, which had better be non-commercial in nature, as this one appears to be. His position isn't airtight; he'd've done better to just simply say that he wasn't affiliated with Disney, rather than to use the logo animation, but he has a decent argument in his favor.