Donna Wentworth, over at Copyfight pointed out a JD Lasica piece detailing the responses from seven studios to his requests to use short (10-30 seconds) clips of their films in a non-commercial project he was working on with his child.

…four of the studios refused outright, two refused to respond, and the seventh wobbled.

This is the quandary millions of us face today: The Hollywood studios demand that we ask for permission to borrow from their works — and then they deny our requests as a matter of course.

One studio acknowledged the the “worthwhile intentions” of the project and seemed to understand that it would be shown only to family and friends (not on the internet), but refused as a matter of policy:

we have had to establish a general policy of non-cooperation with requests of this nature.

There’s nothing new in this, of course. Writer Chris Turner had to pay over $4 a word to quote a few lines from some Radiohead songs in his book about The Simpsons. Hip hop, once emblematic of “remix culture,” one example of voices and venues squashed (here’s what happens when artists try that today).

Anyway, Wendy Seltzer tells me it’s the EFF’s 15th birthday and they’re doing a blog-a-thon. This isn’t really about why I joined the “fight for my right to fair use and a vibrant public domain,” but it says a lot about why I’m still in it.

Related: The People Who Owned The Bible and Orphaned Works — when you can’t even find the people to ask for permission.

tags: copyfight, copyright, darknet, denied, deny, eff, eff15, hollywood, hollywood studios, home video, orphaned works, permission, permission culture, refuse, refused, remix, remix culture, studio, video clips

I had just sat down to post a note about an interview with J.D. Lasica in On The Media (listen to MP3) this week when I found David Rothman beat me to it. The interview was one of the better treatments of copyright issues that’s I’ve heard/seen in the (relatively-) popular media.

Here’s the summary from the OTM site:

For every move that media industries have taken to protect their copyrights, there has been an equal and opposite countermove by consumers. In Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation, J.D. Lasica explores the realm in which so-called pirates operate – slicing, dicing, and sharing media to their hearts’ content. Lasica talks to Bob about how Hollywood is driving consumers further into the shadows and under the radar.

One of the best features of OTM interview, is the way they ran it along side a story about Backstage BBC, the new developer interface/API for the worlds most popular news website. How’d it work? It worked because — just like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and others — they saw value in opening up their copyrighted material to see how others might “remix” it.

But because Rothman reported on the Darknet/Lasica interview first and better, I’m taking the easy way out by throwing down a few links and calling it good:

Lasica’s book: Darknet.

Lasica on Darknets –“private, encrypted spaces where social groups can communicate with each other and exchange files.” His concept, ten examples, and Wikipedia’s take.

Lasica on digital libraries: top 10 assaults on digital liberties.

Technorati Tags: api, bbc, bbc backstage, copyright, copyright issues, copyrights, darknet, david rothman, developer interface, on the media