Mae & Copyright Fair Use: Current

According to Current [21 November 2005 issue], another producer gave up plans for longer Mae West segments in a documentary film, which would have required buying footage. . . . WGBH notably relied on fair use in the 1999 series Culture Shock, including montages of short clips that qualified as commentary, says attorney Jay Fialkov. This fit into the concept of fair use because the series itself commented on trends in the popular arts. Even so, when producers found that extensive footage of Mae West was not available on acceptable terms, they switched the focus of an episode so they could use more material on screen.

----Current_Magazine_excerpt----
Doc-makers get specific about copyright fair use
Originally published in Current, Nov. 21, 2005
By Steve Behrens

Friday afternoon, things changed for producers who need to use somebody else’s footage and music in their documentaries. Clearing rights may still cost a lot and take too much time, as in the past, but Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi believe producers now have a solid rationale for not paying excessive and confounding fees for copyrighted materials in certain cases. On Nov. 18 [2005], the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, the Independent Documentary Association, public TV’s Independent Television Service and the series P.O.V., and other media groups endorsed a Statement of Best Practices defining four kinds of situations when a producer, under the “fair use” provisions of copyright law, need not pay for a film clip, a shot of a painting or a snatch of music. . . .
Jay Fialkov [is] deputy general counsel at WGBH in Boston . . .
Read it online: http://www.current.org/
- - excerpt from article published in Current, Nov. 21, 2005 - -
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Mae West
Photo: Mae West as an interactive game
Mae West.