RESOURCES FOR ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Policy Issues

Media policies create the architecture within which social media can happen. Media concentration, copyright law, fair use policies, Internet policies, digital rights management and other hot policy issues are discussed in resources here.

For an overview of how communications policy affects independent creators including filmmakers, check out Digital Futures below.

Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use. Learn more about the project.

Digital Futures: A Need-to-Know Policy Guide for Independent Filmmakers
A Joint Project of the Center for Social Media and Independent Television Service
Digital technology is transforming filmmaking. And policymakers are scrambling to catch up with the changes. What policies are good for independent filmmakers? What are the hot issues, and what are the positions that best support the creativity and diversity that independent filmmakers represent? Digital Futures: A Need-to-Know Policy Guide for Independent Filmmakers answers those questions with to-the-point answer

Intellectual Property Issues for the Social-Issue Documentary Filmmaker
By Shari Kizirian
Cultural arts journalist Shari Kizirian provides an overview of intellectual rights issues--copyright, trademark, digital rights management--as they affect the creative work of filmmakers.

Ephemeral for no good reason: the waste of documentary and independent films
By Rick Prelinger
The wide availability of inexpensive and user-friendlier production tools has finally brought us closer to the long-deferred dream of mass moving image authorship. But while many (though not all) obstacles to production have crumbled, distribution problems are escalating.

Answers to Common IP Questions for the Independent Documentary Filmmaker
By Jessica Mickelsen
To help relieve some of the attendant burdens and potential expenses that could incur for failure to comply with intellectual property clearance, the filmmaker should thoroughly and scrupulously explore available clearance alternatives.

"Keepers of the Public Domain in Electronic Media: Keep It Up!"
Annual convention of Alliance for Community Media, the member organization of cable access stations nationwide. Remarks by Pat Aufderheide, July 10, 1999, Cincinnati, Ohio

Links

The Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP), founded in 2000, provides research and advocacy on free speech, copyright, and media democracy issues. In May 2004, FEPP became part of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Free Press Media Reform Network
Founded by author and professor Robert McChesney, Free Press is a national non-profit media reform organization working to: open, democratize and ignite media policy debates; increase advocacy efforts in Washington connected to grassroots outreach across the nation; strengthen the media reform network and the broader movement;
and make media a bona fide issue in America.

The Benton Foundation
Provides information on communications for the public interest, and a daily electronic mailing list of news summaries from major publications on communications policy.

The Media Access Project
A nonprofit, public interest law firm that promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media of today and tomorrow.

The Future of Music Coalition
A not-for-profit collaboration between members of the music, technology, public policy and intellectual property law communities, sticks up for artists, creative freedom, and public access to technological innovation.

The Center for Digital Democracy
Committed to preserving the openness and diversity of the Internet in the broadband era, and to realizing the full potential of digital communications through the development and encouragement of noncommercial, public interest programming.

Public Knowledge
A public-interest advocacy organization dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant "information commons"—the shared information resources and cultural assets that we own as a people. This Washington, DC based group speaks in a single voice for a wide spectrum of stakeholders—libraries, educators, scientists, artists, musicians, journalists, consumers, software programmers, civic groups and enlightened businesses.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
"Created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web."

Center for Arts & Culture: Cultural Commons
"A Washington, DC policy center dedicated to improving the decisions that shape our cultural life," this website provides members space for networking and information exchange, as well as learning about new opportunities and links to member arts organizations available for all.

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