Fair use in publishing: A Society for Cinema & Media Studies Report

22Sep09

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m on the SCMS Public Policy Committee and one of our main initiatives is to draft formal policy statements on how cinema & media scholars deal with copyright and fair use. Two years ago we released a best practices document outlining guidelines for teaching and pedagogy. Now I’m happy to announce [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies   |  1 Comment
Tags: scms

Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney

14Feb09

My textbook, Television and American Culture, has hit the streets (or at least the postal system – order yours now!). I received my first copy yesterday, and am happy to say that it looks great. This is due not to my own work (I’m solely to blame for the content), but the excellent staff at [...]

Filed under: Books, Copyright, Fair Use, TV Industry, TV Textbook, Television   |  6 Comments
Tags: abc, disney

The media library in a post-disc world

06Jan09

I’ve read a number of articles like this one, speculating on the potential future of the Blu-ray disc as media platform in the wake of online delivery of HD content. As a consumer and viewer, I’m heartened by this, as I’ve not jumped on the Blu-ray train yet. Moreover, I see a lot of potential [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies, New Media, Technology   |  6 Comments
Tags: blu-ray, dvd, library

Fair Use for Educators – and The Chronicle’s continuing poor coverage

11Nov08

Today the Center for Social Media officially released its latest in its series of excellent fair use guides, The Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education. It’s must reading for anyone involved in media pedagogy or policy.
However, in what has become a trend, I must protest the way the Chronicle of [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies, Teaching   |  4 Comments

On piracy, property, and popularity

24Feb08

Not that they need any advertising, but I wanted to highlight this entry on David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s blog about the history of His Girl Friday. It’s a great account of how works like films outlive their initial moments, a process I’ve studied for television programs in my book using the term “cultural life” [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Film Industry   |  1 Comment
Tags: Dragnet, film studies, His Girl Friday, public domain

Fair use in film and media pedagogy

08Nov07

For the past two years, I’ve served on the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Public Policy Committee. I encouraged SCMS to form the committee, following the impetus emerging out of the Television Studies Interest Group, as motivated primarily to tackle the issues of copyright and fair use as it impacts the field of film [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies, Teaching   |  4 Comments
Tags: film studies, Media Studies, scms

Copyright and Television

13Jul07

Update: The book will be out soon – details on the Television & American Culture website.
My major project for this summer is to finish (or come real close!) a draft of my textbook, Television and American Culture. The goal of the book is to introduce television through a topical structure, using six basic facets to [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Politics, Media Studies, New Media, TV Industry, TV Textbook, Technology, Television   |  4 Comments

Fair use letter in The Chronicle

29May07

A couple of weeks ago I complained about an editorial in The Chronicle of Higher Education that misrepresented copyright policies and ignored fair use altogether. I adapted that post into a letter to the editor, published in this week’s Chronicle. Since The Chronicle puts most of its content behind a pay wall, I’ve reproduced the [...]

Filed under: Copyright, Fair Use   |  2 Comments

Another annoying copyright editorial

20May07

In today’s New York Times, Mark Helprin argues that copyrights should be eternal, U.S. Constitution be damned. His basic argument: copyrighted materials are intellectual property, and all other property rights are de facto eternal, not expiring into the public domain after an (increasingly approaching eternal) interval. And how dare anybody strip someone of what they [...]

Filed under: Copyright, Fair Use   |  1 Comment

Another Chronicle article overlooks fair use

11May07

One of the things that makes me most cranky about media policy & academia is how quickly educational institutions and academics endorse knee-jerk copyright protectionism as an unquestioned norm, whether or not the law actually upholds such beliefs. The Chronicle of Higher Education, the main trade journal for academics (which also locks its archives to [...]

Filed under: Copyright, Fair Use, Media Politics   |  6 Comments