Back in 2010, we began featuring a series of videos from filmmaker Kirby Ferguson. Called Everything is a Remix, the four-part video series explored the idea that (to quote from one of my earlier posts) “great art doesn’t come out of nowhere. Artists inevitably borrow from one another, drawing on past ideas and conventions, and then turn these materials into something beautiful and new.” That applies to musicians, filmmakers, technologists, and really anyone in a creative space.
If you would like to watch the original series in its totality, I would refer you to the video below. Above, you can now watch a new Kirby Ferguson video that delves into the concept of Fair Use–a concept defined by the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use website essentially as “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work.” They go on to say: “Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement.”
Needless to say, fair use is an important concept if you’re making your own videos on Youtube, or if you’re a teacher using media in the classroom.
By the end of his short video, if you’re still not clear what Ferguson means by Fair Use, you’re in luck. He’s giving you the opportunity to submit questions to be answered by “a real live lawyer in a follow up video.” He also includes extra resources at the end of the segment.
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