Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend

You may recall the launch of our Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video (part of the collection of such Codes at centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse) last summer. We've now put together a video about the Code. Google provided funds to our partner, Tony Falzone's Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School, and we provided the creative and professional package and made the film. It's up on YouTube and variety of other sites.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 18, 2009) --American University's Center for Social Media, in collaboration with Washington College of Law's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and the Stanford University Law School Fair Use Project, is launching a new video explaining how online video creators can make remixes, mashups, and other common online video genres with the knowledge that they are staying within copyright law.

The video, titled Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend, explains the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, a first of its kind document­coordinated by AU professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi­ outlining what constitutes fair use in online video. The code was released July 2008.

"This video lets people know about the code, an essential creative tool, in the natural language of online video. The code protects this emerging zone from censorship and self-censorship," said Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and a professor in AU's School of Communication.  "Creators, online video providers and copyright holders will be able to know when copying is stealing and when it's legal."

Like the code, the video identifies six kinds of unlicensed uses of copyrighted material that may be considered fair, under certain limitations.  They are:

• Commenting or critiquing of copyrighted material

• Use for illustration or example

• Incidental or accidental capture of copyrighted material

• Memorializing or rescuing of an experience or event

• Use to launch a discussion

•  Recombining to make a new work, such as a mashup or a  remix, whose elements depend on relationships between existing works

For instance, a blogger's critique of mainstream news is commentary. The fat cat sitting on the couch watching television is an example of incidental capture of copyrighted material. Many variations on the popular online video "Dramatic Chipmunk" may be considered fair use, because they recombine existing work to create new meaning.