COPYCENSE

Editor’s Note: Site Check is a special section that shares with our audience noteworthy Web sites or user-generated content. Previously, a part of our weekly Copycense Clippings coverage, Site Check now is a special section that appears on Thursdays.

If you have or can recommend a Web site, online project, podcast, screencast, or video you feel is a noteworthy contribution to the public debate about creativity, code, and content, please let us know. We gladly will attribute all contributions, so when sending in a Site, please include your name (or screen name).

Fair Use Principles for User Generated Video Content. Electronic Frontier Foundation creates suggested fair use principles by which it suggests content owners should abide. A host of organizations, including Public Knowledge and Center for Social Media, School of Communications, American University, endorse the suggested guidelines. While the principles make sense legally and commercially, the environment in which EFF asks content owners to abide by these principles is irrational. Therefore, the comment that “Content owners and service providers have indicated their mutual intention to protect and preserve fair use in the UGC context, even as they move forward with efforts to address copyright concerns” seems to be at odds with what occurs regularly. We argue if content owners intended to preserve fair use, situations like the Lenz v. Universal no longer would occur. While we would be the last folks to call for even more copyright legislation, perhaps Congress would be a better forum for these principles. Categories: Fair Use & Other Exceptions; Film & Video; Web & Online. (Attribution: News Blog.)

P2P File Sharing. Ohio State University, which received the most RIAA notices as of February 2007, hosted a forum about so-called file sharing which included students, RIAA representatives, and musicians. Video of the event is available. (Attribution: The Wired Campus)

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