I'm fairly certain that at least in the United States that "fair use" laws
allow for the use of ANY copyrighted material for educational uses, like say
MTV music videos and television commercials incorporated into your
educational video that you produce. You could then sell this educational
video, pay the editors who created it, etc. There is a landmark case around
Professor Sut Jhally doing just that, his organization has made dozens of
films using all copyrighted material:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iTQ5IA7Uqw
Also, check out http://www.creativecommons.org
As someone who works in communications for nonprofits we routinely
appropriate corporate logos for use in ads attacking a bad corporate player
and have run such ads in major papers, etc.
We have also used material found by using the "undo" feature of Microsoft
Word which can expose all sorts of interesting information and comments,
etc. in word documents found on corporate websites.
In writing books exposing dirty industry practices associates have used any
and all list postings, etc. and quoted them verbatim in such books. The book
"Toxic Sludge is Good for You" comes to mind.
James John Bell
http://www.smartmeme.org
On 2/2/08 2:56 PM, "Harry Roth" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> For some reason, when I replied to mandrake's post, it was sent only to
> him instead of to the list, so I am reposting my reply and his:
>
>
>> - copyright always resides with the author AFAIK, once something is
>> freely posted on the internet there is an implied license to republish
>> elsewhere on the internet - some forums make blood curdling claims to
>> exclusivity but I don't think it has ever been enforced in law and is
>> really just hot air designed to restrict reasonable free discussion.
>
>
> Mogg mentioned "implied license" as constituting permisson to forward or
> repost a post to a list.
>
> Mogg, maybe you are thinking of the implied license that occurs when
> someone downloads a page into their browser to read it rather than
> reproducing copyrighted material found on the web for one's own
> purposes. An implied license of www material allows someone to download
> the material onto their computer for their own one-time use, because
> that is what a browser does. It doesn't mean that the material can be
> reproduced
> anywhere anytime just because it was found lying around on the web.
>
> The very idea of implied license arises from work done for hire. Courts
> have held that there has to be an agreement between the contractor and
> the user such that the user hired the contractor to produce the work,
> the contractor agreed and produced the work and handed it over to the
> user for use, and both parties intended for the user to have copyright
> on the material. This is a far cry from reproducing someone's writing
> that you came across on the internet.
>
> With private emails, there is never any implied license to use the
> material beyond simply downloading an email someone has sent to your own
> mail server. Any other reproduction of the email requires permission of
> the copyright holder, i.e., the writer. You can't even forward the email
> to someone else without the permission of the writer.
>
> With emails to a list, there is some discussion that forwarding or
> archiving of emails not be seen as a violation. Some lists that I have
> heard of have dealt with this in advance by stating that all emails are
> copyright the list. Otherwise, it's debatable. Public forums I
> participate in that focus on intellectual property rights do not allow
> the reproduction of even any part of an email or the forwarding of any
> posts, just to be on the safe side. To my mind, unless the email writer
> says in the email that it is okay to reproduce it, don't do it. That
> said, there is nothing to stop anyone from paraphrasing material, just
> like we all learned in school. I would think that would be a sufficient
> remedy for anyone who simply wants to further the spread of information.
> I don't see why info has to be spread verbatim and thus raise copyright
> issues. I don't think this impinges on free discussion.
>
> Here are some sites that discuss implied license:
>
> http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html#implied
> http://www.ipfrontline.com/depts/article.asp?id=9463&deptid=3
>
> Harry Roth
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