Innovation in College Media

Andy Dickinson follows up on a previous post by expanding his comments on Fair Use in the United Kingdom, more commonly known as Fair Dealing.

So it seems that there is a lot more to law than just contempt and libel. Perhaps that hour you set aside to teach yourself soundslides or play with Twitter might be better spent having a chat to your Photographers, your subs and lawyers.

Fair Use is a vague territory, without a lot of case law to give direction on what is and isn't acceptable (see this publication from the U.S. Copyright Office about Section 107, the Fair Use section of copyright law). As a Supreme Court justice said once about obscenity, "I know it when I see it." That said, there are more and more options for content creators who want to find audio, video, writing, and photographs to use without fear of legal repercussion. The most comprehensive of these is the Creative Commons, which we've discussed before.

Flickr, for instance, allows you to search through all of their photos to find photos that are licensed through CC for use by others. It's a handy tool, and one that should be understood by every beginning journalist.