May 09 2008
Copyright and the Public Domain
If you create your own products, you’ve probably run into the copyright quagmire. Determining what constitutes fair use of copyrighted material can be tricky. In fact, just tracking down copyright holders or figuring out which works are now in the public domain can be nearly impossible sometimes.
Duke University Law School has put together a very readable, comic book style explanation of rights, releases, and freedom of expression called Bound By Law
A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,” the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this new comic book…
The comic is released under a Creative Commons Share Alike license and is free. Download your copy here. It’s available in several versions, including HTML, PDF, and Flash.
If you upload videos to YouTube, you’ll eventually have to understand these issues! Don’t wait until you are forced to take a video down to start learning the law.
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