Film copyrights for academic presentations

[Kerim Yasar]

I think only a copyright lawyer could answer your
question with any real authority, but there does seem
to be a general consensus that use of copyrighted
material (within limits) in an academic presentation
counts as "fair use" because there is no profit
involved and you are not infringing on the market or
sales potential of the copyright holder (I would
frankly think you're doing the exact opposite by
providing free advertising, however small the audience
may be).

This issue came up in a discussion we had following a
video presentation made by a visiting scholar at
Columbia University.  He had made a "Ken Burns-style"
photo-montage documentary and added commercially
recorded music as a soundtrack.  That was a somewhat
more ambiguous case because he wasn't "quoting" the
music to make an educational point, but rather to add
to the aesthetic effect of the video.  The use of the
photos was fine, however--no different in principle
than showing slides at a presentation.

There's a very informative site about copyright and
fair use here:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/

Kerim Yasar


--- Wei Ting Jen <intewig at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm working on my dissertation presentation
> ???????????? and about to send off a
> presentation abstract to Kinema Club VII, and was
> wondering if anyone is
> familiar with film copyrights on this list.
> 
> As part of my presentation, I'm planning to make a
> short, 15 minute film
> which features excerpts from the war films I'm
> discussing (e.g juxtaposing
> some common scenes and symbols from different
> films). No plans for
> commercial release :), purely just to be used for my
> thesis presentation,
> and simply because I like making films.
> 
> However, I suspect I might be running into a
> minefield of potential
> copyright problems. I was wondering if anybody out
> there is familiar with
> copyright issues, and can tell me if there are
> limits on the use of film
> footage for academic presentations? These are all
> war-era Japanese films,
> from 1945 and before.
> 
> Thank you so much,
> 
> Wei Ting
> 
> --
> "Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots
> looking forward, You can
> only connect them looking backwards, so you have to
> trust that the dots will
> somehow connect in your future." - Steve Jobs
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com