Duke University’s Center for Public Domain, which is part of Duke Law, has come out with a comic book (although it’s not that funny) about copyrights and public domain.
You can view it online for free: html, flash, or a .pdf file.
You can purchase it from Amazon.
Or you can purchase them in bulk from Duke.
Either way, it’s worth reading. It basics is for independent film makers, namely documentaries, but the information they present is useful for authors as well. The line between Fair Use and Copyright is both fuzzy and plain.
A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky†theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,†the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What’s “fair use� Bound By Law reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture.
Links:
- Duke University
Duke University School of Law
Center for Public Domain
Bound By Law comic book page
Read it on-line
Duke University Press
Wikipedia
(another hat tip to Miss Snark)