Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Video and Multimedia Production

This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.

As online video burgeons, so do questions about what kinds of uses of copyrighted works are legal online. Inevitably, those questions will be settled at least as much by practice and private negotiation as by legal action. Recent discussions of filtering and monitoring practices for platform providers show the importance of identifying lawful uses, while meeting industry concern to limit unauthorized use of copyrighted material. This study showcases user practices in use of copyrighted works within their own online videos at the dawn of this process. It identifies nine common kinds of re-appropriation practices, including satire and parody, criticism, and video diaries. It shows that a substantial amount of user-generated video uses copyrighted material in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration, although no coordinated work has yet been done to understand such practices through the fair use lens.
Thus, a significant set of creative practices is potentially both legal and at risk of curtailment by currently discussed ways to control online piracy and theft of copyrighted works.

"A spirited debate recently arose on the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS) listserv. A (real world) conference had been announced with the aim of "raising awareness of the benefits of using online technologies in supporting teaching, learning and assessment, with a particular emphasis on the impact of e learning." A university was organizing this conference and aiming it at the university sector. Contributors to the IFETS listserv questioned whether there was still a need for conferences on this topic. In my experience at the University College Dublin (UCD), understanding of the online medium's potential among faculty has always appeared limited. But recent software developments have helped more academics—and their students—at UCD benefit from online learning."