Thanks to Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing for information on the new “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video” written by an academic consortium out of American University’s Center for Social Media and the AU Law School and Stanford Law. This great seven-minute video explains the circumstances that allow appropriations of copyrighted material. My quick view of the video pulled up some of the fair use conditions:
don’t use too much material (ie, appropriate amounts)
use for critique
use for giving context
use for launching discussion
use for mashups
always give credit to sources
Read or download the report and the code at the American University website. Study. And get to work. The code doesn’t carve out new law but it does explain what may not be clear to many–that you can use copyrighted material and that the fair use doctrine will cover you under many circumstances if, for example, you get a takedown notice.
