Guidelines for Fair Use

The Chronicle's Wired Campus Blog has a story, including a video report, about researchers at American University who have published a study of fair use in copyright law. The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center for Social Media director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property. The online report includes links to examples of videos and argues that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos (think YouTube) are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.