“Fair use,” despite being what should be considered an essential limitation on copyright laws, is often ignored for digital creators that rely on its function. This limitation essentially grants one with the freedom to use the copyrighted works of others in their own media, just as long they alter it enough to make it easily distinguishable from the original. For example, one could sample the footage from a show or movie, while adding their own commentary and editing to offer potential audiences an entirely new experience that would differ from simply watching the piece of media that was sampled. This is common practice for content creators on YouTube, with many making a living by implementing this practice in their videos. Unfortunately, there are instances where the original owners of borrowed media are against others using their creations/property, resulting in them forcibly removing videos that should technically still fall under fair use. In fear of being sued by wealthy media creators/distributors, YouTube creators often comply to these cases of unfair video removal without making the effort to fight back. Last year, however, a YouTube channel known as h3h3productions did the opposite and actually went to court after being faced with a similar strike. After over a year of fighting their case in court, the channel was able to come out victorious, as the judge deemed their sampling of the plaintiff's content to follow the accepted rules of fair use. Nevertheless, this still came at a massive cost, as they were faced with hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees that were necessary just to resolve the case. Luckily, the were fortunate enough to have a dedicated fan base that offered them support, thus, lessening what would have been a devastating financial burden. Many don’t have this luxury, however, making it all the more important to keep fair use alive and properly implemented in cases that it should rightfully apply.
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| Óðinn at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons |
Hello Alan,
ReplyDeleteI wrote about fair use as well and the implications that come with this process. I believe that there is fine line between an original author’s work and the work of an editor. It is interesting to see what these editors do to make an original work a work of their own. Often times these authors become creative by changing a variety of aspects about the original piece, but that is not always the case. I enjoyed your article as this is an interesting topic to discuss.