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Fair Use and Online Video

Remixes, mashups, fan tributes and other creative work burgeoning in online video often use copyrighted material without permission or payment. When is it fair to do so? In many cases, creators can employ fair use, a key feature of copyright law. Welcome to a code of best practices in fair use for online video, and to studies and other information that help you understand the importance of fair use in maintaining an open door for tomorrow's creativity.For deeper resources, including teaching materials, background on the law, video examples of fair use in action, and other codes of practice, go to centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse.

Publications

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances. This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and… more

Recut, Reframe, Recycle

Online videos frequently quote copyrighted material without permission, in ways that could be entirely legal through fair use. But these works are threatened by anti-piracy measures that do not distinguish adequately between legal and illegal uses. more

Videos

April 5     watch · download

Remix Culture (3:51)

When is it fair and legal to use other people's copyrighted work to make your own? What's the line between infringement and fair use? Take this tour of remix culture classics, and use the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to make your own decisions. Please share your thoughts with us on our blog. To download a quicktime version of this video right click here.

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