#transformative use

Today we found a copy of the 2001 Cease and Desist-ish letter from Anne Rice to FanFiction.net

Read more about Cease and Desist letters in fandom and

Yes it is worth disputing.  Sometimes just filing the initial dispute will resolve it.

Here is a great write up of a vidder who went the entire distance

Even if you want to only fill out the initial paperwork, it will help.  https://vidders.github.io/articles/vidding/legal.html

In the meantime, here's what you do

1. Create an AO3 account. You will use this to embed your vids and link to it in your vids posts.  This is where people will leave you comments and feedback...that way, if your vid is taken down,  you only need to update the new in one location (your AO3 post). And your comments and kudos won't get deleted.

2. Host your vid in two locations  - vimeo or vidders.net can be one. The other should be Critical Commons.

I'd embed Vimeo/Vidders.net and add Critical Commons  as a link to any vids post. If the vid is blocked in only a few countries, add a link to your AO3 placeholder in the notes section (If your vid is blocked in X and Y country, head over here for alternatives).

Critical Commons info: http://www.transformativeworks.org/critical-commons/

3. Touch bases with Vidders.net about backing up your entire YouTube channel - including comments.

4. Also more Youtube tips here:

https://bironicwastaken.tumblr.com/post/149269201721/notes-towards-contentids-effects-on-vidding-fx (2016)

'still quasi'

in the wake of my ai experimentations ~ i began to wonder why not steal/transform art in a more intentional/historically precedented manner? i love poetry & collage ~ & these artforms' free philosophies in regards to plundering art which has come before (with all their various cultural connotations), transforming it, & creating something meaningful out of all the detritus of our collective & personal consciousnesses. let's build something new in the shell of the old.

~

Footnotes

“The 1976 copyright statute defines fair use in section 107 with a preamble enumerating a non-exclusive list of potentially fair uses—criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research—followed by four factors courts should considered when determining fair use:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

The nature of the copyrighted work

The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The funny thing about these factors is that they don't really provide any guidance at all. What specifically is a judge supposed to consider regarding the purpose and character of the work? What about the nature of the copyrighted work makes a use fair or not? To understand the effect this uncertainty has on creative efforts, imagine if speed limits were defined in a similar way. Rather than 60 mph, the police and courts were advised to consider a list of factors like the nature and character of the roadway, the amount and speed of traffic, the purpose of the trip. You would never know how fast you could drive and could, depending on the mood of the court, get a ticket at almost any speed. It seems unfathomable that we would endure such a system, yet that is exactly the state in which congress left us. The reason for this is that Congress didn't create the fair use section with the intent of defining new legal concepts, but rather codified 150 years of judicial practice, with all its uncertainty intact, into a few sentences. The statue simply paraphrases Justice Joseph Story's 1841 opinion in Folsom v. Marsh:

In short, we must often, in deciding questions of this sort, look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work.”

ARTIST ALERT: A work can be considered “transformative” when it has little impact on the original artist’s potential market. It is only one factor in an affirmative defense when asserting the use of original art in a new work was fair use, however it can be a deciding factor in a Copyright infringement case. 

The US was sued for printing a photo of Korean War Vet Memorial on a postage stamp, where the sole copyright owner was the Memorial’s sculptor, Frank Gaylord. The question was: when a photo is taken of a fixed, copyrighted work, who ultimately owns the copyright?  The photographer, or the sculptor? The court ruled that while the sculptor does hold the copyright, the US Postal Service used the sculpture fairly in the stamp, as the photo constitutes a "transformative" work which has little impact on the sculpture's potential market. Therefore, no copyright was infringed.