Fair Use and the democratization of media
Here is an interesting judgment regarding fair use.
There is a continuum of legality for copyright. Somewhere along the continuum is the ability to use something in a work that you make. For instance, a 30 second youtube video with a baby dancing to a Prince song. Somewhere along the line is outright copyright infringement. For instance, posting an entire Prince song on Youtube, with original video.
Somewhere in the middle lies Youtube content. I don’t know which way this whole thing will go. I just hope that we don’t lose more freedoms than we already have. I can’t tell you how many older people than I have told me how many freedoms we no longer have compared to them.
I think the digital revolution could be the best thing yet for democracy. It allows people to communicate directly without having to incur a large cost. This democratization is happening all over digital media. From blogs, where you can post a news story within seconds of it happening, and within minutes it can be linked to and copied all over the world. To the democratization of digital video. This allowed me recently to film, direct, edit and produce my own Documentary Pawtucket Rising. As I get closer to the release, I will post more about my documentary. But, this is such a great time to be alive. So much is changing so fast. It must be what it felt like to live in the 60s.
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