Fair use: Buffy and Twilight remix
I've finally got around to watching the Buffy vs Edward Remix that half the Internet seems to have linked to. I found the last few seconds the most interesting, because it states that "This is a transformative work and constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law." The combination of movie industry demands that such remixes be taken off YouTube and other sites, combined with increasing activism around copyright, seems to be having an effect.
Copyfight activists are making a valuable political contribution by arguing that the creations of amateurs are worth protecting. While much of the illegal copying going on around the place happens purely for viewing purposes, successfully cracking down on 'piracy' by introducing copy-protection technology would make it impossible to produce remixes like this one. Admittedly, the idea of copy-protection technology even being 100% effective is laughable...but why should only those with technical skills be able to produce remixes like this? The harder we make it, the fewer people can do it.
I love the thought of living in a world where my teenage cousins could produce remixes that take the pop culture that surrounds them and mash it up to reimagine and critique it. Sure, plenty of people have written blog posts and articles that critique Twilight's gender relations...but the impact and accessibility of a critique that repositions the material itself is something else. I want people to be able to be able to take images, news footage, movie clips, music, and remix them into anarcha-feminist critiques of the anarchist movement, critiques of the racism in 300 (warning: swears!) and Disney movies, even fan-edits.
There are also some remixes that look at copyright and fair use, including A Fair(y) Use Tale and Keir Smith's oh so criminal, meant to stimulate thought about Australia's copyright system. Australia currently has no fair use provision, although we do have something similar, "fair dealing" (more here). As far as I can tell, since 2006 it has been illegal for Australians to circumvent copy-protection technology, and it doesn't seem that there is a provision to waive this for fair dealing.
So if you break the copy-protection on your Buffy DVD to remix it, it's illegal. But please don't stop!
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Image courtesy of Tama Leaver.