Collegiate Times

Students and faculty members listen to Patricia Aufderheide speak in Torgersen Hall about copyright law and policy on January 29th, 2009.

Professor Patricia Aufderheide, one of American University's Scholar-Teachers, is a critic and scholar of communications policy issues in the public interest and independent media with a focus on documentary film.

Her work on fair use in documentary films has changed industry practices today. She founded the Center for Social Media in 2001, which showcases media for democracy, civil society and social justice. Professor Aufderheide was asked by Professor of Communication Stephen Prince to come speak at Virginia Tech. She will be presenting "Copyright Meets Remixers: How and why copyright law and policy are adapting to changing video culture' tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Torgersen 2150.

CT

: The American University's Center of Social Media investigates and sets standards for socially engaged media making, especially the new front of video culture. Is this research that has always been significant?

PA

: This is the most exciting research I've ever done. It's about the next phase of culture and how people are going to shape it. We're basically returning to an earlier era of creativity, collaboration and sharing. Until recently, copying has become plagiarism, and there's this new notion that anything that isn't new is original. These new remixes and mash-ups we're seeing are available due to digital capacity, and we are simply demonstrating vitality and collaboration. In this lecture I will explain the copyright law, fair use, and the need for people to build on existing culture to create new ones.

CT

: Where does your policy work mostly lie?

PA

: My policy work deals with copyrights - how people can legally copyright material without getting in trouble. I care because the future of culture is in remixes and mash-ups. If we do not have a clear understanding of this concept, our freedom of expression becomes limited.

CT

: So obviously we're seeing a lot of these limitations brewing on the corporate front.

PA

: Well, large media corporations are the primary opponents of the idea of fair use. Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. These corporations, like Disney and NBC Universal, are opposed to this idea because they own most of their content, although most of it is made of mash-ups itself. For example, take Snow White as a mash-up of another form--originally collected by the Brothers Grimm and German folklore and then distributed and collaborated by Disney. The notion that Snow White should be the last time someone mashes up a story is an idea that came in with a business model based off controlling the actual copy. If someone took a South Park episode to make a mash-up, that is a legal example of fair use.

CT

: I've definitely seen this concept transfer over to the music industry. Where does fair use begin and end there?

PA

: If it contributes more to society than it harms the original owner, are you stepping on that person's market? Or have you put that material to new use? Look at The Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction." Whenever people see it on a website or used in a video it's probably not fair use as some would see it as stealing. But let's say you make a video of someone covering the song or (you) play it in Rock Band; it's not the original recording.

CT

: So as long as it's not the original recording?

PA

: That's not the issue. Today's cover of "Satisfaction" is way different than the original. If you use a section of the song and juxtapose it to a video with political references, to perhaps infer a frustrated politician it would be fair use because it's not being used for its original purpose and not affecting the original market. You see it in media every day. However, the news that you have available has not spread as widely due to the fact that corporations want to get across that point that it's their copyrighted content and that people should pay for it. These companies have convinced people that any use of their material has been stealing, and it's not true. It's perfectly fair use.

CT

: Through the Internet, casual communication, personal stories and opinion, homegrown news and amateur cultural works can be made easily available to large audiences. How do you feel (about) having personal culture entering the area of public culture changes the way people communicate themselves? Is it better this way?

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