Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

American University’s Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic and the Center for Social Media have released a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. [Press release] The code of practices is organized around six very common situations (listed below) that come up for online video makers.

• Commenting on or critiquing of copyrighted material
• Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
• Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally
• Reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon
• Copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
• Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements

Hat tip to Alex Curtis, Public Knowledge's Policy Blog. [JH]