Remix culture and free expression are synonymous with artistic video creation. The possibilities of digital video are limited only by the imagination of the creator and the legal and technical restrictions that are imposed on her creativity. Whether cutting from political speeches, mashing up pop culture, or exploring new and original work, we are at a crossroads of art, storytelling, and participation. Video on the web can’t simply be “internet TV” or a glorified on-demand system. For its potential to be fully realized, online video must be a dynamic medium that invites clipping, archival, remix, collage, repurposing, and other transformations. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption.

The Eclectic Method/ Image by ccLearn

The advent of online video, and the threat of piracy, have led to access restrictions and legal maneuvers to lock down content and restrict use of the raw materials of culture. This erosion of creative license has turned fans into adversaries and increases industry reliance on a regressive copyright structure to protect static business models.

Artists will continue to release work that makes use of popular culture as they always have done, and to choose video as a medium for artistic expression. The question is whether the legal right and the technical tools to create will be embraced or restricted.

More info:
Organization for Transformative Works
Illegal Art exhibit
ThruYou: Kutiman remixes YouTube
Eclectic Method
Total Recut

Fair Use

Our shared popular culture is driven by Hollywood movies, television shows, video games and the latest musical hits. Due to its ubiquitous nature, it is entrenched in our everyday lives, becoming part of the language we speak to each other and also shaping how we see the world around us. Pop culture is largely created, distributed and owned by a few major media corporations, and copyright laws restrict its public use. Given the tight control of these powerful institutions, how can remixers, artists, educators, and filmmakers find ways to speak using our shared pop cultural language? How does fair use intersect with copyright regarding our artistic rights to create, criticize and build on the past?

Stanford’s Anthony Falzone at OVC09/ Image by lucbyhet

From the Center For Social Media’s Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Online Video:

“Video is increasingly becoming a central part of our everyday landscape of communication, and it is becoming more visible as people share it on digital platforms. More and more, video creation and sharing depend on the ability to use and circulate existing copyrighted work. It is important for video makers, online service providers, and content providers to understand the legal rights of makers of new culture, as policies and practices evolve. Only then will efforts to fight copyright ‘piracy’ in the online environment be able to make necessary space for lawful, value-added uses. Mashups, remixes, subs, and online parodies are new and refreshing online phenomena, but they partake of an ancient tradition: the recycling of old culture to make new. The bargain is this: we as a society give limited property rights to creators, to reward them for producing culture; at the same time, we give other creators the chance to use that same copyrighted material without permission or payment, in some circumstances.

Copyright law has several features that permit quotations from copyrighted works without permission or payment, under certain conditions. Fair use is the most important of these features. Fair use is flexible; it is not uncertain or unreliable. In reviewing the history of fair use litigation, we find that judges return again and again to two key questions:

• Did the unlicensed use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
• Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?

Video makers can take heart from other creator groups’ reliance on fair use. For instance, historians regularly quote both other historians’ writings and textual sources; filmmakers and visual artists reinterpret and critique existing work; scholars illustrate cultural commentary with textual, visual, and musical examples. Images and sounds can be building blocks for new meaning, just as quotations of written texts can be. Emerging cultural expression deserves recognition for transformative value as much as more established expression.”

More info:
American University Center for Social Media on Fair Use
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
Stanford CIS Fair Use Project

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