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Legal Drama
Does Gawker's Publication of McSteamy Sex Tape Constitute Fair Use?
It probably seemed like a fun idea at the time. Last year, Eric Dane, known as "McSteamy" from the show "Grey's Anatomy," his wife Rebecca Gayheart, and former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche decided to make a home movie. Yes, that type of home movie. The threesome recorded themselves nakedly fumbling around in bed, slurring words, and splashing in a...
more »Legal Drama
A Brief History of AP's Battles with News Aggregators
The news is information, and information wants to be free, as the saying goes. But for news organizations, the news is a product that is collected, recorded and sold for profit. And those profits are now under extreme economic pressure, threatening some news organizations with extinction. Both online and traditional news outlets are regrouping, retrenching and reconsidering their business models...
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Should Copyright Law Change in the Digital Age?
This is the final part of my three-part email roundtable discussion looking at the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use of Online Video created at the behest of the Center for Social Media at American University. In the first part, the respondents in this email roundtable talked about what the Code means, how they might put it...
more »Online Video
Creating a Video to Help Educate People on Fair Use
Last week, I ran the first part of a special three-part series on fair use in online video. With the release of the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use of Online Video, the question was how this Code might help video producers, remixers and mash-up artists use copyrighted works legally under "fair use" rules. In the first...
more »Digging Deeper
Will Code of Best Practices Help Video Mash-Up Artists Stay Legal?
You just created the best video mash-up ever, taking a speech given by John McCain broadcast on Fox News, remixing it with the song "Ol' Man River," and quick-cutting in clips from gangsta rappers. You upload it to YouTube and other video-sharing sites, and watch the views pile up. But have you run afoul of copyright law? Do you...
more »Digging Deeper
Anti-Piracy Dragnet Could Hurt 'Fair Use' of Copyrighted Video
All the lawsuits and rhetoric around people uploading copyrighted material on video-sharing sites such as YouTube make it seem like a black-and-white situation: either you're shooting your own original video or stealing it from someone else. But what's lost in that simple either-or interpretation is the more gray area in copyright law known as fair use, which protects people...
more »Your Take Roundup
Loosen Copyright Restrictions for the Internet Age
Slowly but surely, the entertainment industry is realizing that it can't use copyright law as a blunt force in the digital age. Take the case of music giant EMI. Not long ago, EMI was fighting music-sharing service Napster and threatening DJ Danger Mouse over the mash-up, The Grey Album. But today the music company announced a plan with Apple...
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