OTW

Welcome to our August 2010 newsletter! Get the updates on our activities and exciting plans just below the cut.

Congratulations to the makers of Star Wars Uncut who last week won an Emmy for “outstanding creative achievement in interactive media" for their collaboratively made, "crowd-sourced" fan film.

The group divided the original Star Wars film into 15 second chunks, and then invited fans to claim a segment and remake it in whatever creative way they wanted. The pieces were then edited back together to make a new version of the film--or, more accurately, many versions of a new film, since each segment has been remade more than once. (A computer program lets you move between them.)

The group is currently “working through the legal issues" with Lucasfilm to produce a full version of the film with official Star Wars soundtrack; Lucasfilm is apparently supportive of the project.

Fans might be interested in Salon's article on fan art: The most extraordinary movie fan art by Matt Zoller Seitz. Good stuff on display here, though it's too bad that they limited the selection to movie-based art--and works by men, apparently.

Here’s a roundup of stories that might be of interest to fans: we've got stories from A (Afghanistan) to Z (the Zombie Beatles!) beneath the cut!

Welcome to our July 2010 newsletter. Get the updates on our activities — including changes to committees, a legal victory, and software improvements — just beneath the cut!

The Copyright Office now has information about the new ruling up on their website. Particularly interesting is the Statement from the Librarian. The full text of the decision is available as a .PDF.

Coverage of the decision is coming out fast; we'll keep updating. Please feel free to comment with links we haven't seen.

* EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers at the EFF's site;

* EFF wins enormous victory against DRM: legal to jailbreak iPhones, rip DVDs for mashup videos at BoingBoing;

* Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are "fair use" at Ars Technica

* Jailbreaking iPhone apps is now legal from CNN Money.com; quotes our own Rebecca Tushnet and discusses vidding particularly:

The agency also granted an exemption allowing users to break DVD copyright controls to extract snippets of copyrighted movies for the purpose of incorporating them into new works, so long as the new creation is noncommercial. Known as "vidding," such remixing is a popular hobby among fan artists, and their creations are widely available for viewing on YouTube.

The ruling doesn't remove all of the legal murk around vidding. Creators still need to ensure that their clips meet "fair use" guidelines, and the Copyright Office specified that its exemption applies only to motion-picture snippets extracted "for the purpose of criticism or comment."
But advocates say the decision is a big step forward. Hollywood movie studios had long held that ripping DVDs for any purpose whatsoever is a violation of the DMCA.

"This ruling is useful because it removes a tool that was able to be deployed over and above copyright law that already has fair-use safety valves," said Rebecca Tushnet, a law professor at Georgetown University who testified in favor of the exception at a Library of Congress rulemaking hearing last year. "Now we're back to where we should have been all along, and we can continue the conversation about what's reasonable fair use."

* Fair Use Victories on the DMCA from the Center for Social Media

* New DMCA Exemptions Legalize Phone Jailbreaking & DVD Ripping for Fair Use at Geeks are Sexy; this article shouts out the OTW and vidding in particular.

* OTW's own press release

* Review Of US Digital Millennium Copyright Act Brings New Exemptions from IP Watch

* New DMCA exemption from animemusicvideo.org

* Letting Us Rip: Our New Right to Fair Use of DVDs in the Chronicle of Higher Education

* Copyright Office Rules in Favor of Fair Use and Consumer Freedom - vidders get a shout out in the Huffington Post

Welcome to our June 2010 newsletter, with apologies for the belated posting! This month's updates are just below the cut.

As an addendum to yesterday's post on Canada's Copyright Modernization Act, I want to signal boost fan Paraka's post about why the proposed bill's section on digital locks needs to be fought and how to go about fighting it. Right now, the bill's emphasis on the illegality of breaking digital locks may supercede other explicitly legal uses of copyrighted material--like remixing and even teaching. This contradiction--that digital locks may prevent what the bill otherwise recognizes as explicitly noninfringing and important uses--should be worked out before the bill is voted on. More information is available from Michael Geist.

Canada’s proposed copyright bill, the Copyright Modernization Act, also known as bill C-32, would legalize user-generated works like fanfiction, vids, mashups, and other forms of remix if passed in its current form. The provision, which is being called the “YouTube Exception” by a lot of legal commentators, “grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances.”

The relevant portion of the bill is below the cut. (Thanks to Grace Westcott for the information.)