Best Practices in Copyright and Fair Use for User-Generated Content
The American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) announces the release of a new code of best practices in fair use for creators in the burgeoning online video environment. The code was coordinated by PIJIP and the American University Center for Social Media. This adds to the Center for Social Media’s report on copyright and remix culture, Recut, Reframe, Recycle released in January.
The code, which was made public today, represents the next step. Collaboratively created by a team of media scholars and lawyers, these best practices will allow users to make remixes, mashups, and other common online genres with the knowledge that they are staying within copyright law.
The code identifies, among other things, 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
According to the code, examples of such use may include, a blogger’s critique of mainstream news (commentary), the toddler dancing to the song “Let’s Go Crazy” (incidental capture of copyrighted material), and many variations on the popular online video “Dramatic Chipmunk” (recombination of existing work to create new meaning.)
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