When I approached Professor Sikand to ask her to speak at our brown bag tomorrow and mentioned the topic was fair use, she gave me a book. The book in question was a textbook for the Capstone students (a requirement for the FAMS major, similar to a senior research project in psych). While I forget the exact title the book was an easy read and only took about an hour or two of sporadic attention.
what was notable was the level to which a filmmaker in today’s lawsuit copyright culture must be aware of their surroundings. A simple TV or Computer at the edge of a frame may end up costing thousands in lawsuits. Additionally as a hypothetical say you wanted to do a documentary about street musicians in NYC, unless they wrote their own original songs you would need to get permission to use the copyrighted material (as would the musicians themselves). As my previous post on Tom Waits Mentions, the legal precedent for impersonation is that it is infringement. However due to the fair use policy because you as a filmmaker are not intending to profit off of the song directly and are using only a portion of the song as a portion of a much larger project, Fair use kicks in and you are good to go from a legal standpoint.
It’s pretty insane how much a filmmaker can potentially be found guilty of copyright infringment. It seems like everything is copyrighted today. I personally think there should be a different standard for documentaries and big-budget Hollywood films. A documentary may use copyrighted material because the filmmaker is trying to capture the essence of real life, whereas a big-budget filmmaker may use it because it fits a scene. In the second scenario, the filmmaker has a choice to use a wide range of materials. For the first scenario, there is no choice. It is simply something that happens in the moment and should not be considered illegal to use.