Lost Video Island

[Aislynn]

Many thanks to our friends at the Organization for Transformative Works, who've won a small battle in the overall fight to get vidding recognized as a legal artistic expression (and not something for the original source material copyright holders to come after with a large lawsuit ).

It's a bit difficult to decipher the legalese but here's the new ruling:

Quote:

The OTW's Legal and Vidding Committees have just been informed that the Library Of Congress is about to release a (long-awaited!) ruling granting a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) exemption to makers of noncommercial remix, which includes vidding, anime music videos, political remix videos and the like. Previously film studies professors had the only exemption: now documentary filmmakers, makers of noncommercial video, and media studies teachers are also permitted to circumvent DMCA technologies if they need to in order to teach or to make artistic statements. (The DMCA exemption applies to you if you are in the U.S. or if someone tries to apply U.S. law to your work.) This ruling does not mean that all vids and other remixed works are entirely out of the fog of legal uncertainty; rather, it means that people making noncommercial remix video do not have to worry about violating the DCMA's anticircumvention provisions (which otherwise might prohibit ripping a protected DVD), which are separate from ordinary U.S. copyright law and which don't otherwise allow for fair use. There is a requirement that circumvention must be necessary, because the Copyright Office believes that screen capture software might in some circumstances produce results of sufficient quality. As Tisha Turk testified, however, this is unlikely to be true for vidders.

Click here to read the rest.

Basically what this means is that it will no longer be considered illegal to rip your own DVDs in order to use them for vids. This does not cover downloading nor does it cover the music use. (And of course, you'd still be legally liable if you ripped your DVDs with the purpose of selling copies of them, which is still very much an illegal no-no. )

This is one small step towards eventually having our vids fall under fully legal fair use for both the video and music source and no longer subject to worries about being sued or even just the inconvenience of having our vids taken down, muted or our accounts closed at Youtube. Hopefully we'll get there one day soon!

Again, thank you so much to the OTW for all of their hard work on behalf of vidders everywhere! ♥♥♥!!!

[nikkimonique]

Yay!!
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[Brooke]

I second that YAY!

[Lostwithoutdom]

Wow! This is pretty big! Yay!
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Morgan

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[Uruviel]

Sweet!
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Heather

[Charlies_Innocence]

HELLS YEAH! Awesome!
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icon by becca

[littleton_pace]

Fantastic news!!! I know the OTW have been trying for years to get something like this through; great to know! definitely the first step
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