Wireside Chat With Lawrence Lessig

An anonymous reader writes "Lawrence Lessig, the foundational voice of the free culture movement, will deliver a talk on fair use, politics, and online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You'll be able to tune in to a live webcast. The lecture by Lawrence Lessig will last 45 minutes, and will be followed by a 30 minute interactive Q & A session. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Stark of the Open Video Alliance. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #wireside. This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like 'fair use.' Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption. Tune in here on February 25th, 6:00pm US Eastern time (see more time zones), or check out our screening events in cities across the world."

Comments

Remix?

[dcollins]

"Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video."

I call shenanigans. How did "remix" sneak into the middle of that list? U.S. Copyright Title 17, Section 107:

...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Re:Remix?

[srussia]

. How did "remix" sneak into the middle of that list? U.S. Copyright Title 17, Section 107:

...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

That is not an exhaustive list. It goes on to say:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Re:Remix?

[cpt kangarooski]

It's not even a very meaningful list. Just because a use falls within the list, that doesn't make it a fair use, and just because a use doesn't fall within the list, that doesn't make it not a fair use. The list is basically just a loose suggestion, and IMO confusing and somewhat pointless. Since the four factor analysis is what actually matters for determining whether a use is a fair use or not, I'd just as soon see the Copyright Act amended to get rid of the list. And if there are uses that are deemed so important that they should always be allowed, they should get new exceptions just for them, rather than relying on fair use.

Re:Inaccurate, it's Theora

[Arthur Grumbine]

I noticed that you dropped this, and thought you might want it back ----> tlambert's Sense of Humor

fair use: use it or lose it

[bcrowell]

If you're in a country such as the U.S. that has fair use or something similar, it's important to assert your right to use it. Over the last 50 years, copyright law has been relentlessly shifting in favor of copyright owners, to the point where a lot of people don't realize that fair use even exists.

As an example, I teach at a community college, and at our fall convocation a couple of years back, they passed out brochures put out by a publishers' association about how it's totally illegal to sell course packs without getting permission and paying royalties. The school officials who agreed to pass it out apparently had no clue that fair use existed. If you put a complete short story by Hemingway in a course pack, then, yeah, you're probably not covered by fair use. But if you take a single graph out of a scientific paper and put it in a course pack, then you're absolutely covered by fair use.

It's just like any other freedom. If we want fair use to remain viable, we have to (a) realize it exists, and (b) have the guts to use it.

Foiled again!

[pxc]

by Lawrence Lessig?

"The inspiration for the title and for much of the argument of this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman's own work, especially the essays in Free Software, Free Society, I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are insights Stallman described decades ago. One could thus well argue that this work is 'merely' derivative". -- Lawrence Lessig, "Free Culture"