Using Sources
If you've ever written a research paper, or any paper in a class for that matter, you probably understand the importance of citing your sources. It's really important to give credit to whatever sources you use, whether you're using their ideas or analyzing them.
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But when you're working in the public sphere (such as online), there's something else you have to think about: who has the rights to use your sources, especially sources like film, TV, etc.?
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There are plenty of memes making fun of how companies like Disney have teams of lawyers just waiting for someone to use material without permission, such as:
If you don't want a nasty letter from a large corporation, you need to think about what your sources are and if you have the rights to use them.
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To practice what I preach, I want to make it clear that what follows comes from a talk called "Using Materials: Permissions, Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use" given by Scott DeWitt at The Ohio State University's Digital Media and Composition Institute in May of 2018.
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There are many materials that exist in the Public Domain, which means they are perfectly free to use. These texts' copyright has expired or never existed. In America, copyright generally expires 70 years after the creator has died (NOT 70 years after the text was produced), though it's different for different countries. That being said, you have to be careful because reproductions of something may be owned by someone still living. For instance, we are obviously well beyond 70 years after Leonardo da Vinci's death, so the Mona Lisa is part of the public domain. However, pictures of the Mona Lisa may be owned by museums or artists still living. So if you pull an image from the internet, it may still have a copyright in place.
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This obviously causes problems for film, since most films are still within their copyright period. It can even be a problem when trying to use some images or music to spice up a presentation. There are two ways to ethically and legally use materials:
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1. Creative Commons: CreativeCommons.org is a site that allows you to search material that is not copyrighted. Much of this material comes from artists who want to share their materials with the world. For example, I found the song that runs in both my podcast and my video essay on Creative Commons because the musician has it online, free to the world. However, when you use these texts and sources, you cannot profit from them or make derivatives of them, and you must credit the original creator. So, if you need a general image or music for your project, this might be a great place to look.
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2. Fair Use: While Creative Commons is great for general things, you're not going to find the newest Disney film in the Creative Commons. However, you may be able to use some material from a text under the US doctrine of Fair Use. Basically, Fair Use allows you to use a text if you transform the work (such as a parody or remix), use little of the work (such as sampling in music or using a single image from a film), and don't devalue the original work. Fair Use also applies if you're critiquing or commenting on a piece, as long as you're purposefully working with the excerpt you include. So, for example, if I want to talk about how the city of Zootopia is introduced (as I do in my video essay), I can include images or a clip of the scene, as long as I'm actively commenting on the excerpts I'm including.
Even if you follow the rules, that may not protect you: after I posted my unlisted video essay to YouTube, I got a notice that Disney had claimed that I had violated their copy rights, which means the video will not play on YouTube (though I can play it on this website through YouTube). Big media companies will often claim copyright infringement on the smallest of things because they assume people won't fight it.
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With any use of sources, you need to make sure that you give credit, that you're clear where you're getting your sources, and that you're using the sources ethically.
Works Cited
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Blair, Elizabeth. “'Ferdinand' The Peaceful Bull Gets His First Full-Length Film.” NPR, 12 Dec 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/12/12/570093107/20th-century-fox-updates-ferdinand-the-peacefull-bull. Accessed 14 May 2018.
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DeWitt, Scott. “Using Materials: Permissions, Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use.” Digital Media and Composition Institute, The Ohio State University, 9 May 2018, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. Lecture.
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Ferdinand. Directed by Carlos Saldanha, Blue Sky Studios, 2017.
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Hello, Dolly! Directed by Gene Kelly, Twentieth Century Fox, 1969.
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How to Train Your Dragon. Directed by Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders, DreamWorks Animation, 2010.
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WALL-E. Directed by Andrew Stanton, Pixar Animation Studios, 2008.
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Zootopia. Directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush, Walt Disney Feature Animation, 2016.
“Zootopia (2016) - Arriving (Try Everything).” YouTube, uploaded by Pigeonification, 20 May 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfJHLMKXiyY&t=9s. Accessed by 11 May 2018.