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Reclaiming Fair Use

How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, Second Edition

In the increasingly complex and combative arena of copyright in the digital age, record companies sue college students over peer-to-peer music sharing, YouTube removes home movies because of a song playing in the background, and filmmakers are denied a distribution deal when a permissions i proves undottable. Analyzing the dampening effect that copyright law can have on scholarship and creativity, Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi urge us to embrace in response a principle embedded in copyright law itself—fair use.
Originally published in 2011, Reclaiming Fair Use challenged the widely held notion that copyright law is obsolete in an age of digital technologies. Beginning with a survey of the contemporary landscape of copyright law, Aufderheide and Jaszi drew on their years of experience advising documentary filmmakers, English teachers, performing arts scholars, and other creative professionals to lay out in detail how the principles of fair-use can be employed to avoid copyright violation. Taking stock of the vibrant remix culture that has only burgeoned since the book’s original publication, this new edition addresses the expanded reach of fair use—tracking the Twitter hashtag #WTFU (where’s the fair use?), the maturing of the transformativeness measure in legal disputes, the ongoing fight against automatic detection software, and the progress and delays of digitization initiatives around the country.
Full of no-nonsense advice and practical examples, Reclaiming Fair Use remains essential reading for anyone interested in law, creativity, and the ever-broadening realm of new media.

256 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2018

Culture Studies

Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society

Media Studies

Reviews

“Aufderheide and Jaszi look at the impact of today’s copyright policies on creativity and argue that fair use—that long-embedded if often misunderstood core principle of copyright—can help creators cut through the static of today’s confusing, contentious copyright environment. . . . Brimming with highly readable, real-world examples.”

Publishers Weekly, on the first edition

“A pragmatic, lucid explanation of how to improve the balance in copyright laws.”

Nation, on the first edition

"Reclaiming Fair Use is clear, accessible, and pithy and will be particularly helpful for creative artists, copyright users, and legal neophytes.”

Times Higher Education, on the first edition

“This is a useful work—thoughtful, clear, and generally free of legal jargon—and deserves to be read by scholars, bloggers, documentarians, journalists, and everyone else, since we are all touched daily by copyrights.”

Library Journal, on the first edition

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The Culture of Fear and Doubt, and How to Leave It

2. Long and Strong Copyright: Why Fair Use Is So Important

3. The Decline and Rise of Fair Use: The Back-Room Story

4. The Decline and Rise of Fair Use: The Public Campaigns

5. Fair Use Resurgent

6. Fair Use in the Courtroom: How Judges Think Now

7. Documentary Filmmakers: Pioneering Best Practices

8. Codes of Best Practices Catch On

9. Fair Use Expands Its Reach

10. How to Fair Use

11. The International Environment

Appendix A. Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use

Appendix B. Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use

Appendix C. Myths and Realities about Fair Use

Appendix D. Answers to Fair Use: You Be the Judge

References

Index

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