Had a good time this afternoon speaking to a lunch gathering at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. I put together a half-hour slide presentation, which will be released on podcast, titled, “War of the World Views: The clash between big media and citizens media.”
I had plenty of material to draw upon, both from Darknet and from Ourmedia. Showed one example of citizen journalism: Trusted Computing, created by Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel and others in Germany. (It’s terrific.)
Then I showed three mashups (could have drawn from scores of them) and discussed fair use in the digital age: the Bush-Cheney debate; an anime mashup; and a Charlie Brown mashup that isn’t on Ourmedia because United Feature Syndicate won’t let it.
Prof. Lawrence Lessig was in the audience and asked a question I hadn’t heard raised before: As sites build out licensing capabilities that provide compensation for artists when part of their work is used in a mash-up, does that undercut the claims of fair use by those who don’t seek permission and use the works anyway?
Great question. The answer is still unsettled. I suggested that users would welcome a narrowing of the large fuzzy grey area that currently confronts those who want to incorporate cultural works into their own. The trend line toward paying compensation to artists for use of their works online is unmistakable. We hope and believe that a grassroots marketplace can be built in a way that doesn’t crimp fair use rights.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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