Essay: Fair Use

[Andrew]

Fair use is how review websites use copyrighted material without first securing permission from the copyright holders.  However, I believe many webmasters (and readers) are a little foggy about this part of copyright law.  I hope that my article will help to explain the subject. 

Feel free to post further information and references.

Click here to go to the Article

[Kruge]

Neil Gaiman (neilgaiman.com) talks about this issue too in his blog and gives some advice to readers.

He does it from a "content provider's" point of view, which might be an interesting angle for some. And he himself offers some of his stories for free (both e-book and audio) - which *allways* is worth the time imho. He's my personal number 2 author, right after moster pratchett. :)

[Katherine]

I have prepared a short list of movies that I financially supported by buying or renting after reading reviews on your site.  Anyone who gives you crap about your use of the fine movies you feature is either a moron or malicious.

Night of the Living Dead, The Howling III, Lake Placid, Dawn of the Dead, Rodan, and every Godzilla movie I've ever watched.  And that's not counting the movies that I revisited after reading reviews.

[Jason Ratliff]

I'll agree here.  There are a lot of movies I've purchased and/or rented after reading reviews from this site.  Based on the content described and the images provided, I've been able to make informed judgment about which movies I want to track down and watch (and some of them took a lot of looking to find).  Personally, I feel this site provides a great service to those of us who enjoy movies like these.  It provides great exposure for many films some of us might never hear about otherwise.
The only complaint I can see from the filmmakers side is they may feel insulted to have their wonderful gem of a film to be called "bad".  And that's an opinion... to which everyone is entitled.  While a filmmaker, like any other artist would usually rather have their work respected, not every movie can be (and not every movie should be).  And if I had the opportunity to make movies, I'd rather have my movie be infamous rather than forgotten.
I remember reading a comic book once where the super heroine had to fight off a vengeful Greek god.  The god had gotten angry and was raining down attacks on history museums for housing the ancient relics meant for his worship.  After much fighting, the heroine was able to stop him, with a speech about how even though his worshipers were long dead, and his relics were not on the pedestal he'd intended, she couldn't understand how he could be angry at the few people who still show him some sort of remembrance and respect by displaying and studying his artifacts, even if it wasn't the worship he angrily felt he deserved.

[Andrew]

Neil Gaiman (neilgaiman.com) talks about this issue too in his blog and gives some advice to readers.

His blog entry about the Harry Potter Lexicon court case, correct?  I think that the company and author who are publishing the book have a very hard case to prove.  Copyright does protect an author from others making derivative works.  I am not certain there has ever been a case that covered an encyclopedia about "facts" from a work of fiction, but hopefully you understand why I say that the Lexicon could be judged a derivative work.  I am also interested to read that court case once the court’s findings are published.

I have prepared a short list of movies that I financially supported by buying or renting after reading reviews on your site.  Anyone who gives you crap about your use of the fine movies you feature is either a moron or malicious.

I'll agree here.  There are a lot of movies I've purchased and/or rented after reading reviews from this site.  Based on the content described and the images provided, I've been able to make informed judgment about which movies I want to track down and watch (and some of them took a lot of looking to find).  Personally, I feel this site provides a great service to those of us who enjoy movies like these.  It provides great exposure for many films some of us might never hear about otherwise.

I have not really had problems with copyright holders trying to push me around by sending DMCA or takedown notices over the years.  There have been a couple, but they have never gone past one or two cease and desist emails.  Once I respond back, we usually either work the situation out, or else the person completely dropped it and never emailed me again.

The good thing here is that my goal is to operate within fair use.  I am not trying to infringe on the copyrights of the movie's owners, but want to review their work, discuss its aspects, and even what it made me think about.  If the review adds something to culture and provides a service to readers, then that is exactly why we have fair use - so that can happen.

[Robert MacDonald]

When I saw the title of your essay I suspected that you received a hassle over your content.  I agree with the poster(s) above on your site, as I myself have purchased several movies based on your reviews.  As a lover of B movies I fondly remember the first time I viewed killer clowns from outer space, zardoz, galactic gigolo and many more.  Your reviews are written in a style that many love to read because it is fun to read.  I don't normally watch the movie clips but the images themselves offer a peek at the quality of work.  You cannot make me believe that many of these filmmakers even remotely figured their movies would be taken seriously.  Killer lawnmowers? Aliens that look like small lobsters or big ants with faces. 

Nothing of your site would warrant a issue to you seeing as most of these movies get rented/purchased due to your diligent (and humorous) work.  How much money has been made by them due to your reviews?  I would suspect a great deal.

[Kester Pelagius]

I have not really had problems with copyright holders trying to push me around by sending DMCA or takedown notices over the years.  There have been a couple, but they have never gone past one or two cease and desist emails.  Once I respond back, we usually either work the situation out, or else the person completely dropped it and never emailed me again.

Same here.  Only real problem I've had is having to turn down screener offers because I feel that the movie is not the sort of thing that would appeal to me, thus any review I wrote would likely be biased towards the negative, and I don't feel that's fair.  This is a general rule that has evolved over time with me rooted in my experiene with reviewing RPG product.  (When comments about the review say the reader felt the reviewer was pulling teeth to say something nice about a product they obvious disliked you know something's wrong.)

[Kruge]

Yes, that Potter thing is one Neil wrote about, but I think he also looked into the whole subject of copyrights a little deeper, because his ongoing plans to offer part of his work online for free.

Of course he's the creator, but can't simply publish ebooks of novels that are available as books... I'm not to deep into that matter myself, I am relatively new in his blog. I jsut mentioned it because at this point I came across several threads in several blogs and forums talking about the issue of copyrights, fair use and related issues. :)