Copyright and Creativity

It often takes years for the academic world to catch up to the breakneck pace of technology. But a new study from Center and American University’s Washington College of Law recently examined the issue of copyright and creativity and came to some interesting – and surely controversial – conclusions.

The report, entitled “Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video,” finds:

…many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.

Fair use is the part of copyright law that permits new makers, in some situations, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying the owners. The courts tell us that fair use should be “transformative”—adding value to what they take and using it for a purpose different from the original work.

The idea here is that a new twist on a song or a video can constitute a “value-add” and that by re-contextualizing something, it constitutes fair and legal use. However, this would appear to leave quite a bit of gray area as to what exactly these “additions” constitute.

With such a large volume of user-generated content being created, the conflict with existing copyright laws has been inevitable. Large content companies have gone on the offensive, suing user-generated sites, making hasty content agreements, and backing their own vehicles (Veoh, etc) for disseminating sanctioned content.

But will they find a peaceful medium between illegal piracy and these “transformational” situations? Is the grey area too large?

The study goes on to recommend the “development of a blue-ribbon committee of scholars, makers and lawyers to develop best-practices principles” to help navigate this going forward.

A complete copy of the report is available here.

Center for Social Media: Recut, Reframe, Recycle