It’s been a while since I posted about fair use. But the Center for Social Media, the Washington College of Law and others who have joined the fray, like Stanford’s Fair Use project, continue to fight the good fight. From the Center’s newsletter:

Chicago filmmaker Floyd Webb wanted to make a movie about a colorful martial arts figure, who called himself Counte Dante (http://johnkeehan.blogspot.com/). The grandmaster of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, William V. Aguiar III, tried to stop him by blocking his access to images of Counte Dante and material from his training video. But Webb had attended an Independent Feature Project panel discussion of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. (IFP was a signatory and co-author of the document, which was facilitated by the Center and the Washington College of Law.) Read the whole article>>

Got a great short that employs fair use? Submit to the Center’s contest! In partnership with the University Film & Video Association, there are cash prizes for student and faculty entries. Deadline is May 1.

One of my longtime friends for my days at the Center for Social Media, Simon Kilmurry who works with P.O.V. and has been a long-time advocate of the fair use project, reminded me that I should post about the news that National Union, a member company of AIG, will now be accepting fair use claims that are made based on the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use and accompanied by a letter from a lawyer. I did post about this over at Renew Media but as I had promised here that I would keep cross-posting to a minimum, I didn’t. But Simon is correct that this is very important and if you aren’t reading Re:Sources, I should provide the scoop here. So, apologies for any lapse in reporting!

The Trades covered the story as well, so it must be true. Also, Larry Lessig announced it on his blog which also makes it true for a lot of folks. If you are a filmmaker and were waiting for the powers that be to annoint your user rights, there you have it.

A small PS - Lessig announced legal clinic assistance to filmmakers for their fair use claims, but also, Peter Jaszi’s clinic at the Washington College of Law as well as Jennifer Urban at USC, among others, have been doing this since the Statement was released. I also have a list of lawyers who understand utilizing fair use and have done so for other filmmakers, so there is help out there! But this kind of assistance doesn’t mean you don’t have to be smart about communication law yourself, so get Michael Donaldon’s book, Clearance & Copyright