This article deals with the gray area of copyright law that is entitled fair use. Right now it protects people who use copyright material for scholarly purposes, reviews, or parodies. The American University Center for Social Media is on a mission to determine what should be considered fair use dealing with online video since that has become the newest trend. In class we are dealing with how law must find a way to keep up with the emerging technologies and it's true because it's obviously become a problem with services like youtube.com and myspace.com making it easy for anyone to create video. They found 9 categories that they considered "fair use" after much research. The push to remove copyright material is still strong. The debates around user-generated content using copyrights are strong as well. There are argument from both the creative side and the legal side and the topic is still up in the air. Online video will be an important matter to figure out and might be the technological advancement that will push the government to rethink the entire Intellectual Property Law.
Save the Dramatic ChipmunkThis article addresses the issue of Internet video and fair use on an even deeper level. In the past few years Internet video has become mainstreamed and it is estimated that about 3 out of 4 of American Internet users are watching online video. This is making people ask the question of whether or not all the "junk" we find created by college kids that sample a song or TV show or movie should be considered a copyright infringement. People assume this it is illegal solely based on the fact that it uses something that is not the creator, but as researchers are coming to find out that might not be the case. This article argues that copyright law needs to have a fair use principle because without it copyright law would violate the first amendment and inadvertently provide a censorship right. After studies of these online videos were conducted, most were found to be eligible for one of the 9 fair use considerations. A good statement is that "we need access to the copyrighted material that composes our existing culture if we are going to make a new culture and comment on the old." This is true and shows that we need to change with technology, but at the same time not get too distracted by ownership to stop creation.
Online Video at Risk of Private CensorshipThis article like the others is about online content and piracy, but it goes into more depth about what is considered "fair use." A study was done entitled Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Material and it decided on 9 types of "fair use" to be applied to the copyright law. The first type is parody and satire, which is used for spoofing. Then next type is negative or critical commentary, which is used to communicate a negative answer. Then there is positive commentary, which is used to communicate a positive message. Another type is quoting to trigger discussion that is used to highlight an issue and prompt public awareness or discourse. Then there is illustration or example, which is material that is used to support a new idea with pictures and sound. Incidental use is regarded at copyrighted material that is accidentally captured when trying to capture something else. There is also personal reportage and diaries and this involves material that is used in the chronicling of a personal experience. Another type is archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials that involved material that is bound to have a short life span due to controversy surrounding it. The last type is pastiche or collage and this covers material that is put together in a new creation. All of these are considered fair use and yet piracy complaints are still abundant.