This is simply outstanding:

This is a short film, by Eric Faden, illustrating how copyright and fair use work (and more importantly, how they don’t work). What makes it exceptionally clever is that it is completely composed of short snippets of Disney animated films. Not only is Disney notoriously thorough in their defense of their intellectual property (as is their right), they have thrown immense lobbying dollars and efforts into getting the term of copyright extended (which kinda stinks).

It’s interesting to note that the music used in this piece is not from Disney, and has been used with permission. After you’ve viewed this clip, you’ll understand why — the music does not play a role in parody, or in teaching, and would not have fallen under fair use. If the subject of the clip was the fair use specifically of music, then the use of music as illustration could possibly have been supported.

I have this come up all the time, when my website clients ask about using music on their websites. This clip does a better job of explaining it all than I have done in the past (and I learned a bit about fair use while watching it, too). I’m so glad I can now point my clients to this to answer some of their questions about copyright and fair use.

[Via Boing Boing]

Posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm | Filed under Animation, Disney
RSS Feed for Replies