Thursday, November 30, 2006
DMCA Exemption for educational use of film clips
This past Monday, an exemption for the use of film clips by film or media studies professors in educational settings was announced by the Library of Congress. Previously, the fair use provision of the copyright law allowed faculty to use a small amount of material from films for educational purposes. Technically, they were only allowed up to 10 percent of the total or three minutes, whichever is less. (I'll get to that in a minute.) According to the DMCA, however, faculty could not circumvent the copy protection on most DVDs in order to option a high-quality clip to use. Many faculty were doing this anyway, but in theory, could have been fined or worse for doing so. Finally, however, the LOC realized the catch-22 that faculty were in and have allowed the exception. Here's the text of their decision:
In addition to proposed revisions to the DMCA, I'd like to see some changes in the copyright law itself, especially in the area of the amount of material (especially audio and video material) that is allowed to be used. Sometimes three minutes is not enough to get a point across or even for class discussion. While this may have been a step in the right direction, I think we still need to keep alert to the issues surrounding copyright, fair use, and the DMCA.
Resources: Campus Technology on the new exception, EFF, University of Maryland on Copyright, University of Texas on the TEACH Act.
dmca, copyright, education
Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.Interestingly, the exemption is still pretty narrow. The material must be contained in the educational institution's repository and further, the professors in question must reside in a film studies or media studies department. That means that if you are a sociology professor and want to show film clips, you're out of luck. Or at least some lawyer could narrowly interpret the decision in a way that makes it illegal for professors in other departments to circumvent copy protection. And my understanding is that the MPAA and the RIAA have a lot of lawyers.
In addition to proposed revisions to the DMCA, I'd like to see some changes in the copyright law itself, especially in the area of the amount of material (especially audio and video material) that is allowed to be used. Sometimes three minutes is not enough to get a point across or even for class discussion. While this may have been a step in the right direction, I think we still need to keep alert to the issues surrounding copyright, fair use, and the DMCA.
Resources: Campus Technology on the new exception, EFF, University of Maryland on Copyright, University of Texas on the TEACH Act.
dmca, copyright, education
Comments:
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Thanks for posting on this. There are now so many fields that have interdisciplinary components, integrating multiple forms of media into their scope of materials and practices. The Swarthmore English Dept., for instance, has offered courses in which students collectively made films as a class assigment.
Clearly there is an increasingly widespread appreciation of the importance of interpreting and employing media in the analysis and engagement with culture. I imagine it would also be plausible for an attorney to argue in favor of an anthropology professor, for instance, who used films to claim that this was indeed an instance of media studies.
I wonder if there is room to interpret Media Studies Departments broadly, rather than narrowly. What if Bryn Mawr decided to call their department “Media and Cultural Studies,” then change the name to just "Cultural Studies"? Could we really imagine that the mission of the department legitimately excluded media studies just because of the name change? To take this a step further, many disciplines hold as a theoretical basis the importance of critical analysis of media as an essential component of complex systems analysis.
Let’s not be constrained by fear, but guided by solid critical thinking.
—Michael
DMCA@remail-it.net
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Clearly there is an increasingly widespread appreciation of the importance of interpreting and employing media in the analysis and engagement with culture. I imagine it would also be plausible for an attorney to argue in favor of an anthropology professor, for instance, who used films to claim that this was indeed an instance of media studies.
I wonder if there is room to interpret Media Studies Departments broadly, rather than narrowly. What if Bryn Mawr decided to call their department “Media and Cultural Studies,” then change the name to just "Cultural Studies"? Could we really imagine that the mission of the department legitimately excluded media studies just because of the name change? To take this a step further, many disciplines hold as a theoretical basis the importance of critical analysis of media as an essential component of complex systems analysis.
Let’s not be constrained by fear, but guided by solid critical thinking.
—Michael
DMCA@remail-it.net
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