Today’s message goes out to the JSF’s Canadian following. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) is issuing a letter to the government tomorrow about upcoming changes in copyright rules. In short, the rules might be getting more strict and less friendly to artists. To read the open letter, go to www.cippic.ca; to sign the letter, send your endorsement and thoughts to common.r@mac.com.
With any luck, issues like Fair Use will become a little more concrete in the near future. Digital editing, mash-ups, YouTube, and etc. keep creating more opportunities for creative borrowing (or copyright infringement, if you’re The Man), and clearer rules are needed. Though in this political climate (um, the corporate one), it’s hard imagining the rules becoming more inclusive. Maybe it’s better to keep Fair Use practices as ambiguous as they’ve been for decades? I’ll try to run that question by some JSF filmmakers soon.
On this subject, last week’s story about the IFC’s public statement that it would no longer pay massive licensing fees to rights holders for clips in documentaries was definitely relevant for our crowd. You can read a summary of this story by The Reeler here.
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