Hughillustration sez, “Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, video artists who break the encryption on a DVD or sample online steaming videos could face legal threats – even if the video they create is considered fair use. We think that’s nuts. Kirby Ferguson, creator of Everything is a Remix, is standing with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in fighting for the right to create remix videos. Please sign Kirby’s letter below and stand up for the rights of video artists.”
Dear Ms. Pallante,
From high school students creating videos for classroom assignments to activists and journalists sampling videos for political commentary, remix videos offer creative ways to educate, empower, entertain, and politicize people around the world.
But this creative expression is threatened by legal uncertainty. Three years go, the Copyright Office agreed to create an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so that creators could break DVD encryption to sample video clips. But that exemption is about to expire, opening up the possibility of legal threats against video artists like us.
Please defend our right to remix videos and grant the exemptions proposed. Renew the exemption that lets video artists break encryption on DVDs in order to use video clips in primarily noncommercial videos. And please go one step further and extend those rights to cover Internet videos, like paid downloads and streaming videos not available on DVD. The Internet is fast becoming the major medium for video, and video often appears on Internet services long before — or instead of — a DVD release…
(Thanks, Hughillustration!)