No it doesn't. As the FBI warning in the beginning says (it is a spoof), you can use limited portions of work for, for example, satirical purposes. This is why, for example, John Stewart can do his show mocking TV shows using their own footage.

Even if the "spoof" were set aside, it is also "educational." Too, the clips used, individually or collectively, do not diminish the ecomonic value of any of the films from which they were taken.

Come on, this is hypocritical. The entire piece was composed of someone else's copyrighted works. This is nothing more than getting by on technicality which the law allows. The only educational value I took from it is that it shows someone how to commit copyright infringement within the law.

Have to disagree.
The moral rights of the original work are respected. The value of the original works are preserved and the work as a whole is a complete new work that I'd say took a very considerable amount of work.
That's the whole idea of copyright, to encourage new works from previous works, we all do this every day, that's why we send kids to school, to learn the works of those who come before so they can use and build on those works.

Bob.

Sorry but I have a major problem in that someone can take all of my work. slice it up and put it together to send whatever message they want to send. By that theory, I could take parts from 100s of movies, splice them together and educate others on racism or child abuse, or how to commit terroristic acts, how to kill someone and not get caught etc....after all, I spliced them together to make a new work for which I had no part in the original creation....do you think Disney gave him permission?

When a kidnapper cuts up a bunch of magazines to paste together a ransom note, there is a legal problem- that being the kidnapping :-). I don't recall ever hearing about a copyright infringement case resulting from a ransom note!

If someone cuts up individual words and phrases from your work and rearranges them, it is clearly different from the original, due to the selection and rearrangement. No reasonable person would think the original author intended whatever meaning the re-arranged work conveys. I am not a lawyer myself, but I'd say such a new work would be a derived work (in part) as well as incorporating new content.

But of course to some extent, all new works incorporate pre-existing work, it is all a matter of degree. In the US, the copyright law (as interpreted by the courts, which varies over time and over jurisdictions) describes what kind of copying is permitted and what is legally actionable. Of course the law may or may not match your personal sense of fairness, justice, artistic integrity, etc.

Patrick, stop and think... for just a minute.

1) The guy who made this is an assistant professor of film studies.
2) It was produced by The Media Education Foundation.
3) The piece is both a "parody" and a piece for "teaching."
4) The piece has not had, nor will it ever have, any negative economic impact on Walt Disney Productions or the individual films used.
5) It's posted on the Stanford's Law School's web site. Do you honestly think they would be stupid enought post a video on their site that was in violation of copyright law???

Jay, don't forgot that they clearly identify Walt Disney Productions as owner and copyright holder of the clips.

Shouldnt matter. The fact is that the law allows for those to skirt the law. It shouldnt matter if it becomes a new work or not. wHY should this professor be allowed to take content that Dsiney PAID to have developed be used by someone else to create a new work when the new artist hasnt PAID for any of the work that went into the original development. Thats my problem with it. Fair use should only cover PERSONAL use, not personal use that is shared with the world. Fair use in education is limited as well in that it cannot be mass distributed which is what this piece is on the web for all the world to view.

But hey, since you arent opposed to it, maybe I can borrow the gooddog collection and create a new work from it and call it satire or educational. It is not fair to the original author Jay. Copyright was designed to encourage new ideas and works, not to take others work and make it the way you want it to be.

I think the discussion has moved from what the law actually is, to what seems right or fair from a personal point of view. That's ok and everyone is entitled to their own sense of what's fair. Not everyone's sense of "fair" is the same.

"Copyright was designed to encourage new ideas and works, not to take others work and make it the way you want it to be."

That depends on just how the work is used. See for example
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http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
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[...] In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. [...]
So what is a "transformative" use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. [...]
2. Parody
A parody is a work that ridicules another, usually well-known work, by imitating it in a comic way. Judges understand that by its nature, parody demands some taking from the original work being parodied. Unlike other forms of fair use, a fairly extensive use of the original work is permitted in a parody in order to "conjure up" the original.
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I agree that my views are personal. The only problem with leaving open to interpretation is that you have way too many gray areas that allow others to skirt the law. What may be interpreted in California can be interpreted differently in Rhode Island hence the difference in pornography being legal to shoot in California and pretty much illegal elsewhere. Laws should not be designed to leave interpretation in the mix. Laws should be defined exactly the limitations and the consequences that result from said violation. This is the exact reason that people convicted of the same crimes receive different punishments or why corporations can get away with infringement or theft (RIAA/MPAA/etc...) whereas Joe Customer gets the book thrown at him for the same violation.

Expansive meanings serve no great purpose when two different judges from two different political parties or two different interest groups have opposing views.

Vague laws do nothing to help further society or innovation. The only true contribution of vague laws is to fatten the pocketbooks of lawyers and those that can afford them. Those that cannot afford to pay for the price of fairness or justice loses out which is why our country is in the shape that it is.

p, you're right. In music, taking pieces of peoples works to make another is now illegal. Didn't used to be, but it became (sampling). Mostly through abuse (instead of 1/2 seconds it got to be 5/6/10 seconds). Yeah, laws SHOULDN'T have easy loopholes because, most of the time, the ones with the $$ are the ones who can exploit them & the ones w/o $$ get shafted. But last I remember, the "teaching" subset of "fair use" ONLY applies to school/educational situations of teacher/student, NOT the general public.

be happy the way it is: look what happened to copyright laws in the first place: went from a few decades, to the life, then to 150+ years, just to keep things from falling in to public domain. Do we REALLY want that with "fair use" laws (I'd prefer my work get ripped offed occationatly then loosing all my rights).

Friar I totally agree. I just have a problem with a major university showing how easy it is to skirt the law. Thats all I am saying.

I dont think there was anything easy about it,, very ,very clever using disney , the king of copyright bull s#$^

Patrick, the law isn't being skirted. He is operating fully within the boundries of the law as defined. If you don't like that fact, that's your problem. It doesn't change the fact of how the law reads.

Patrick, have you ever shown a copyrighted movie to you class as an example?

Only with the author's permission. Thats the way our district works. You have to have written permission from the author, the publisher, the principal, and the students parents.

Patrick, have you ever shown a copyrighted movie to you class as an example?

Take it one step further. I have a relative who is a high school drama teacher. He rips DVDs on a regular basis to be able to show his students short clips from several different plays without having to change DVDs and then cue it up to that specific segment.
To my surprise, this falls under the educational fair use section of Canadian copyright law.

Mike

I think it's unwise to try and compile copyrighted clips like this. It'll be interesting to see what happens if/when Disney takes legal action against this and youtube for infringement.


ken

<I>To my surprise, this falls under the educational fair use section of Canadian copyright law.
</I>
It also falls under the Fair Use provisions of the recently amended copyright laws of the US.

Patrick,

Try looking at this from a somewhat different point of view. Pretend you are a television film critic, like Roger Ebert. Your job is to look at movies and give your viewers an honest opinion about the quality of the movie. To do that successfully on television, you have to be able to show short clips from the movie, so you can say, "See? That's what I'm talking about -- the acting (lighting, camerawork, directing, etc.) here is awful!"

Now what studio in their right mind would give you permission to use a clip if you were going to do a negative review? Clearly, here the public interest is served by allowing Roger Ebert to show a small segment of the movie in order to provide journalistic criticism and analysis, even if the copyright holder doesn't like it. That's exactly what "fair use" is intended to protect.

Or, take another example. Say I am a communications professor at a university, and I want to teach my class about how propaganda techniques are used in American television advertising, and I want to show some clips of TV ads to illustrate my point. Again, that's fair use, and the professor shouldn't have to get permission from the ad agency or the company to do that.

Think of all the satires on Saturday Night Live or Leno or Letterman. That's another, well-established area of "Fair Use" under U.S. Copyright law.

All of these things are exempted because these uses serve a broader public interest that outweighs the copyright holder's much narrower interest.

What's difficult about "Fair Use" is that the criteria are not codified in the law as an exemption, it is a legal defense against a copyright infringement claim. So, you don't find out for sure if your use meets the Fair Use test until AFTER you've been sued, which obviously can get expensive.

Check out the Documentary Filmmakers Best Practices on Fair Use at the Center for Social Media http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/fair_use_final.pdf

It also falls under the Fair Use provisions of the recently amended copyright laws of the US.

Thank you, Douglas, that's what I've been trying to tell Patrick, but he ain't buyin' it.

Just because you can do it doesnt mean its right nor ethical. In my classroom, the examples I use even with the author's permission are in combination with my lecture therefore I add something to the examples being used. The Standford professor used only content that was paid for and developed by Disney. It would be different if he added some of his own content in there rather than basically rip off various Disney's works to make his point. I'm sorry but that is just unethical.