Query: Have you had trouble with copyright questions?

From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Deborah R. Gerhardt 
PLEASE CONTACT: [email protected]
Subject: have you had trouble

Here is a request for information from a colleague (please get in
touch with her, not me):

Dear Filmmakers,

I am working on a copyright research project, and it is my hope that at
the end of it, I will be able to clarify whether some works that populate
our museums and libraries are in the public domain.  In order to gain a
better understanding of what I hear is a common copyright challenge for
you, I am looking for examples that illustrate the problem I am studying.
 Have you ever wanted to use content in your work but could not because of
unclear copyright issues?  If so, please get in touch with me if you tried
to use content such as a photo, text, film clip, sculpture, painting,
poster, album cover, advertising material or drawing that (1) was given to
a museum or library collection before 1989, (2) is not marked with a
copyright notice and (3) is publicly accessible.  If you have had a
frustrating experience that matches this scenario, I would be so grateful
for the opportunity to hear your story.

Many thanks for your time,


--
Deborah R. Gerhardt

Assistant Professor of Law
UNC School of Law
160 Ridge Road, CB#3380
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3380
[email protected]
919.962.7219
http://www.law.unc.edu/faculty/directory/gerhardtdeborahr/



--
Pat Aufderheide, University Professor and Director
Center for Social Media, School of Communication
American University
3201 New Mexico Av. NW, #330
Washington, DC 20016-8080
www.centerforsocialmedia.org
[email protected]
202-643-5356

Order Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, with
Peter Jaszi. University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Sample Reclaiming Fair Use!

Early comments on Reclaiming Fair Use:

"The Supreme Court has told us that fair use is one of the
"traditional safeguards" of the First Amendment.  As this book makes
abundantly clear, nobody has done better work making sure that
safeguard is actually effective than Aufderheide and Jaszi.  The day
we have a First Amendment Hall of Fame, their names should be there
engraved in stone.  --Lewis Hyde, author, Common as Air: Revolution,
Art and Ownership

“Reclaiming Fair Use will be an important and widely read book that
scholars of copyright law will find a ‘must have’ for their
bookshelves. It is a sound interpretation of the law and offers useful
guidance to the creative community that goes beyond what some of the
most ideological books about copyright tend to say.”—Pamela Samuelson,
University of California, Berkeley School of Law

"If you only read one book about copyright this year, read Reclaiming
Fair Use.  It is the definitive history of the cataclysmic change in
the custom and practice surrounding the  fair use of materials  by
filmmakers and other groups."  --Michael Donaldson, Esq. Senior
Partner, Donaldson & Callif, Los Angeles.