Fair Use?

Instructors and students “borrow” pieces of other works for educational purposes all the time. The World Wide Web has made research, quotation and citation easier than ever before. It has also made the rules governing fair use – for educational or other purposes – more complex.

Law is not a static thing. Like society, it is an ever evolving thing with statues and case law constantly being re-interpreted. It’s human nature to interpret things in a way that best serves the interpreter — but in the study of law, it’s best to be both objective, and somewhat skeptical.

One company that has a reputation for being very particular about how their intellectual property is used is Disney (though they are not alone)

This reputation inspired Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University to create the following video by splicing Disney clips. Published by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and icensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License this short film is free to download, post, and redistribute.

Why is this legal? It is for educational purpose and it is parody. It also uses very small clips from a number of Disney works. Other aspects of the “Fair Use” defense may apply. Do you notice any?

Professor Faden raises the question of the length of copyrights (“virtually forever”) and suggests that our society actually suffers a loss of creative input since, historically, creative works have frequently been inspired by, and build upon, previous works.

What do you think?