We've heard from a number of people that YouTube has recently blocked a number of fanvids due to alleged music rights violations. But YouTube also provides a mechanism for vidders to assert their right to fair use: a quick and easy dispute process.

YouTube recognizes that there are legitimate artistic and critical reasons to use copyrighted material, and the online form gives, as a potential reason for dispute: "This video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder. It is a fair use under copyright law." The form also asks you to explain further.

Fair use is a muscle: it gets stronger when you exercise it, so if you believe that your vid is fair use, that it transforms copyrighted material for a new critical or creative purpose, you should dispute the claim.

Here are some resources you might consult to explain why your vid is fair use:

1) The Best Practices in User-Generated Content released by the American University Center for Social Media. (Their main site on fair use is here.)

2) The EFF's Test Suite of Fair Use Examples for Service Providers and Content Owners; the test suite features a vid.

3) The Q&A with Fan Vidder Luminosity in New York Magazine.

4) Michael Wesch's Anthropological Introduction to YouTube presented to the Library of Congress on June 23, 2008 (features Lim's vid "Us" among other videos).

5) Other academic and legal articles about vidding include:

Remixing Television: Francesca Coppa on the vidding underground. Reason Magazine, August/September 2008

Francesca Coppa, Women, Star Trek, and the Development of Fannish Vidding in Transformative Works and Cultures (2008)

Henry Jenkins, How to Watch a Fan Vid (2006)

Sarah Trombley, Visions and Revisions: Fanvids and Fair Use (.pdf), 25 Cardozo Arts & Ent. J. 647 (2008)

Rebecca Tushnet, User-Generated Discontent: Transformation in Practice (.pdf), 31 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 110 (2008)

And don't forget Fanlore: one stop shopping for trying to explain to people what fannish things mean!

Vidding News: The OTW wants to announce its support for the EFF's proposed DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] exemption for video creators--like vidders--who rip DVDs in order to use clips for fair use remixes. Members of the Board provided the EFF with background information on the petition to the copyright office (right-click and save), which explicitly cites fan vidders as an established creative community that relies on clips from DVDs to make works that are fair use: or what the petition calls "fundamentally transformative visual works."

As the EFF's petition notes, noncommercial videos like vids have good fair use arguments, but they may not have their day in court without an exemption to DMCA circumvention claims. To put it in layman's terms, vids themselves may be legal fair uses, but right now, it's hard to make the argument because copyright owners are able to claim that the DMCA says ripping DVDs to make the vids isn't legal--yes, even if you bought them.* (Capturing, for those of you who still capture, is legal; it takes advantage of a loophole called the 'analog hole'.) The blanket prohibition against ripping short circuits fair use; as the EFF notes, a DMCA exemption will give vidders and noncommercial videographers the chance to make their fair use arguments.

The EFF's petition briefly discusses fan vidders Luminosity, Lim, and here's luck: "A vid like Vogue is a direct exercise in cultural criticism--a stylish attack on the romantic conjunction of violence and male sexuality in a major Hollywood film. Some vids (such as Us by the vidder known as Lim), can be far-reaching commentaries on vidding and fan culture itself, while other vids (like Superstar by the vidder known as here's luck) serve the more modest (but equally fair) purpose of commenting on characters in a favorite TV show." The entire petition is well worth reading for vidders or fans of vidding culture--not to mention those interested in issues of free speech in a Web 2 .0 world.

*(unless you're a film professor: film professors currently have the only fair use exemption.)