Want to learn even more about fair use? Here are some great resources for you to check out!

• Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
• Fair Use at the Digital Media Law Project
• Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?
• What is Fair Use? on YouTube
• Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
• Fair Use Index at the United States Copyright Office

Is your favorite fair use resource missing? Please send it our way via our contact form and we may be able to include it on our page!

We're excited to announce that New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill will be speaking on a panel at the Alliance for Community Media Annual Conference on August 13, in Pasadena, CA from 3:30-5:00pm.

The topic of the panel will be "Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Fair Use in Media."

The panel will be an opportunity to help community media learn about copyright and fair use, and the many ways the law can actually empower their creativity. The panel will also cover how to avoid legal disputes in the first place, and how to move forward if you do face legal threats.

The conference takes place from August 12-14 at the Hilton Pasadena.

Learn more about our brand new Fair Use App after the jump!

Speaking out on wrongdoing in the military can be particularly challenging for service members who are trained to stay in line and follow orders. The stakes could not be higher for military whistleblowers who speak out against fraud, waste, abuse, and sexual assault in the military. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office noted a number of deficiencies in the protections offered to members of the military who report wrongdoing, and far too often, those whistleblowers are unfairly punished for their efforts to bring accountability to the armed services.

This is why New Media Rights recently joined with a variety of organizations, including Project on Government Oversight, Government Accountability Project​, Public Citizen​, Sunlight Foundation​, Demand Progress​ and others, in sending a letter to Congressional leaders supporting critical protections f in sending a letter to Congressional leaders supporting critical protections for military whistleblowers.  We've worked with various filmmakers and creators who bring light to issues in our military. These have included working on an important film about the treatment of workers in U.S. bases overseas, and a recently launched podcast on Veteran's issues.

Today, New Media Rights submitted our final set of comments supporting exemptions that allow filmmakers to bypass encryption and technical protections measures for purposes of making fair use.

Specifically, following testimony in May, the Copyright Office requested definitions of a variety of terms including documentary, documentary-like, non-fiction, fictional, scripted, biopic, “inspired by,” imaginative, and “totally fiction” that were used in the proceeding.

In our responses to the Copyright Office's request, we explain that genre distinctions are not easily made, and that an exemption for all filmmakers is the best way to proceed.