Center for Social Media

UCLA, which in January yanked down videos being streamed for classroom use as a result of bullying by a trade association has rediscovered that educators have fair use rights. Now, UCLA professors can post videos again within their passworded class sites online. In a UCLA press release, Christine Borgman, chair of the Information Technology Planning Board and UCLA Presidential Professor of Information Studies, said, "The UCLA faculty and administration quickly reached consensus on both the need to restore these essential instructional services and to assert our rights to use intellectual property within the bounds of existing copyright laws.” While UCLA pointed to special educational exemptions, it rested its argument on fair use. The press release also noted that UCLA plays…

Remix videos, mashups, memorials, fan videos and other works that build in copyrighted material sometimes get taken down from YouTube and other video sites, because automatic bot programs identify copyrighted material. And then stupidity ensues. All the audio in Larry Lessig’s February speech to the Open Video Alliance was recently taken down because Warner Music Group identified some copyrighted material in clips of remixes that he used, to demonstrate the vitality of emergent participatory culture. (You can still watch it on Blip TV, though.) Journalists and the Electronic Frontier Foundation cried foul, and Lessig will contest it. And it will go back up. But YouTube needs to build into its service the human touch—an actual person needs to make a…

Loni Ding -- documentary filmmaker, university teacher, and media activist – died on Saturday, February 20, 2010 in Berkeley, California. She exemplified the best in the way social documentarians can expand the public sphere. She did this by working to create public institutions to showcase underrepresented voices in American life, and by creating work that not only raised awareness but encouraged meaningful discussion and debate. Her film work had immediate and long-lasting impact, including influencing Congressional action on redress for Japanese-American internment during World War II. A tireless advocate for social issue documentary, she played a central role in the creation of the National Asian American Telecommunication Association (now Center for Asian American Media), ITVS, and the Association of Independent…

The Open Video Alliance, which pushes for more and better open-source tools to make, edit, showcase and access video, held a dramatic demonstration of the power of open source on Feb. 25. A speech by copyright guru Larry Lessig was beamed via open-source codec Ogg Theora to more than 40 venues around the world. American University was one of them; a group of the copyright-curious gathered to watch the speech, which was only occasionally garbled. Lessig spoke passionately about the vitality of remix, or read-write culture, and the need for “free/fair” copyright policies. He then urged people to work to get corporate money out of Congress, so that better copyright policies could be passed. I was thrilled to see the…

One of the most impressive recent social documentaries, The Most Dangerous Man in America, has been nominated for an Academy Award. It tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to release the Pentagon Papers—a story full of important parallels for today. The film is beginning its theatrical release, and we hope to bring it to campus soon. Meanwhile, there’s an excellent interview with directors Judy Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith in Filmmaker magazine this month, in which Rick references the Center’s work: “We had a very interesting experience with the fair-use issue. I don’t know how much you’re familiar with Pat Aufderheide and that whole movement, to make that more clear and get filmmakers the right to do it legally. We…

Noted independent reporter and commentator Laura Flanders hosts GRITtv, a daily news, arts and culture show aired on cable, satellite and online. She invited me and Tracy Van Slyke, my coauthor for Beyond the Echo Chamber, onto the show yesterday to discuss the transformation of journalism. We tackled a few interesting questions, including whether the recent layoffs in broadcast news will really matter, and why bloggers continue to focus on the Beltway despite a flood of new grassroots content. How can both legacy and independent producers move "beyond pale, male and stale," to inform and empower underserved audiences? Check out the interview to learn more.

QUESTION: Dear Center for Social Media, I'm working on a documentary film that makes substantial use of video footage and photographs, all of which was shot by one person (the subject of my film), and all of which I have permission to use. Here's my question: the subject of the film took his video footage and pictures and cut together music videos, and I'm very sure he didn't license the music. I'd like to be able to use some pieces of the music videos in my film, because I feel they are critical to illustrating certain points I'd like to make (namely, about his life as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how he was developing as a filmmaker…

The Diversifying Participation conference held at the University of California, San Diego on Feb. 18-20 and headed by USC’s Henry Jenkins, marked the consolidation of a research field, digital learning. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and showcasing many MacArthur-funded projects, the conference featured creative overlaps between educators, youth media practitioners, digital designers, gamers, nonprofit institutions and funders. The overcrowded space—this was one hot ticket—was crammed with panels, so I can’t claim to have even sampled the best, but there was a lot to learn. Our panel on fair use for digital education was alive with questions about negotiating students’ desires to sample the world of copyrighted expression for their remixes and commentaries. Sasha Constanza-Chock (who…

This article was co-authored by Katie Donnelly. Over the past few months, we've been presenting MediaShift readers with a picture of a more dynamic, engaged, public media future. But how are Public Media 2.0 projects measuring their success in informing and engaging publics? Embracing Digital: A Review of Public Media Efforts Across the United States, a report by Gupta Consulting, gives us an idea of the scope of the challenge: Very few stations define success with concrete metrics. Most examples are anecdotal. ("I just have a sense.") What they consider to be "successful" is very subjective. Those that do have an idea of what success means to them include metrics such as page views, unique users, and calls into station…

Currently on NPR you can listen to Weekend Edition's report on Fair Use Day. Center's Director Pat Aufderheide is interviewed as well as other experts such as Gigi Sohn and Johnathan McIntosh. The piece originally aired Saturday, February 13. Listen to it now! When Fair Use Isn't Fair To some in Hollywood and the music industry, there's a fine line between using movie and audio clips to create new works and flat-out copyright infringement. Joel Rose reports on the some of the intricacies in fair-use law.

Where is Your Line?, a project that will be demoed at the soon-to-be-rescheduled Making Your Media Matter conference, has partnered with MTV to have an open conversation about the recognition of abuse and sexuality among teenagers. Nancy Schwartzman, who heads up this project, wrote the following on the project's website: Since its launch, our team has been watching MTV’s “A Thin Line,” a campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of “Digital Abuse,” and helping teens untangle normal versus unhealthy relationship dynamics. They focus on how cell phones can amplify and exacerbate abusive behaviors. Some of my favorite slogans are: It’s a thin line between attentive/obsessive, curious/controlling, love/abuse. I was thinking that we over here at The Line Campaign, have a lot…

The Students for a Free Culture conference, hashtag #fcx, drew participants from throughout the U.S., who negotiated filthy weather on their way to Washington, D.C. Organizer Ben Moskowitz congratulated them not only for making their way through the snow, but also for recognizing the importance of Washington, D.C. for people who care about copyright and creativity. Students for a Free Culture started out in 2003 when a couple of Swarthmore students hacked into Diebold company emails showing how shaky and riggable electronic voting machines were. The organization now has dozens of chapters all over the country and internationally, and it focuses on making information in the higher educational environment as open and accessible as possible. Saturday was full of great…

On Monday night, I'm cohosting the first of what we hope will become a weekly chat about public media 2.0. Karen Everhart of Current explains: Public media advocates are experimenting with a new kind of forum: holding a live simultaneous chat using Twitter, the microblogging social network. The first chat is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 15, 2010, at 8 p.m. Eastern. To prepare, organizers are soliciting ideas for discussion via Twitter. Interested people can tweet their suggestions using the hashtag #pubmedia (and read others’ ideas by searching for #pubmedia). To participate, follow @pubmedia for regular updates and to join the Feb. 15 chat. For the Twitter-averse, there are alternative channels: the blog PubMediaChat.org has a feed of the Twitter posts,…

In DC and sick of sitting around your house watching the snow blow? Join us on Thursday night, 6:30 at Busboys and Poets (14th and V) for the launch of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media! Hope to see you there.

We apologize for the inconvenience that canceling the Making Your Media Matter conference might have caused some attendees, but given the current weather conditions in the area, we are assured this decision was for the best. We have not yet decided on a rescheduled date for the conference, but it will likely be later this spring. All registrations will be honored for the rescheduled date. If you are unable to come to the new date when it is announced, we will begin processing refunds on registration. We will be back in touch soon with more details regarding the rescheduled conference.

Making Your Media Matter is postponed. It was a tough decision, and we thought until today that we could still hold the event. But the combination of more snow, American University closings (and the possibility of more), airport closings (and the possibility of more), and transportation chaos all around the DC area convinced us that postponement would be the wiser choice. We don’t think even a wonderful event is worth taking crazy risks to get here. And we really don’t want you coming here to find out that we can’t open the doors! I’m really sorry about inconveniencing you. I’m also sorry I won’t be spending Thursday and Friday getting inspired by the amazing people who come to the conference…

Due to the inclement weather, New America Foundation is closed today and they are not able to host in-person attendees. The previously scheduled conference, "Making Media Work" will not be held. This event, however, is proceeding as scheduled in a webcast-only format. You can tune in on this page at 12:15 ET / 9:15 PT today. Please join in the conversation via Twitter -- use the hashtags of #beyondecho and #mpinaf. The economics of media have been turned upside down in recent years, and many organizations are still struggling to make sense of the new landscape. Authors Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke focus on the rise of a new progressive media in their just-published book, Beyond the Echo Chamber,…

Influence is one of the "elements of impact" that we're exploring in this series of blog posts leading up to the Making Your Media Matter conference. How can we best evaluate the role of public media projects in shaping users' understanding of an issue, moving users to action (whether that's seeking further information, voting, or political organizing), or affecting policymaking? These are by no means new questions. Throughout the 20th century, scholars, journalists and political commentators offered up various and often competing theories about the influence of mass media. Studies of related fields of communication—advertising and PR, propaganda, campaigning, entertainment—shed light on the prospects for media to move people to what critics often characterized as negative forms of action: impulse…

RealScreen Summit, February 1-3, the annual coming together of documentary cable programmers and hopeful producers, is also an annual cold shower in the realities of making television today. At a panel on product placement in reality programming, one speaker said with not a trace of irony (and remarkable clarity), “Our audiences come to us to escape from reality. That’s the first thing we have to satisfy.” A keynote speaker celebrated the fact that changing technologies make it ever more possible for content producers to tailor their content to the needs of advertisers. The overarching theme seemed to be, Embrace the advertiser. The road to audience attention seemed to be ever more edge-of-seat sensationalism. The makers of “Whale Wars,” a Discovery…

On Thursday January 28th, American University's Kay Spiritual Life Center’ sponsored a panel, Tweets & Blogs: Social Media as a Voice for the Voiceless. (CSM cosponsored.) The speakers included:. Emily Jacobi is the Co-Founder and Director of Digital Democracy, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering civic engagement through digital technologies. David Johnson is a Professor of Journalism at American University and teaches courses in digital journalism, interactive storytelling and convergence media. Matt Wood is the Associate Director of the Media Access Project, non-profit law firm and advocacy organization. Emily Jacobi from Digital Democracy began the talk with a Powerpoint reviewing her current work in Burma, Moldova and Haiti.You can watch it on Slideshare here Of particular note is…