{"277011":{"#nid":"277011","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech Study Reveals Copyright Complexities, Social Norms  in Online Media Creation","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn the age of mashups, fan fiction and content sharing, online media creation has spurred new complexities in copyright, effectively turning the legal concept of \u201cfair use\u201d on its ear, according to a new study from Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearch into fan fiction and other types of remix communities reveals many legal misconceptions persistent among different groups when applying copyrighted work to their own creations. The research also highlights online social norms \u2013 independent of actual law \u2013 that guide the use of copyrighted works in fan communities.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor the study, Georgia Tech researchers interviewed content creators who participate in remix and fan creation activities \u2013 think \u201cGangnam-style\u201d parody videos or\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003ETwilight\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;fan fiction \u2013 and found that legal ambiguity, rather than technical limitations can be a higher barrier to creating media online. The study focused on participants\u2019 understanding of the U.S. copyright law\u2019s \u201cfair use\u201d provision, which allows for the use of copyrighted material without permission from the owners in certain instances.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe wanted to take a group of people who make subtle judgments about what they think they can or can\u2019t do in a legally gray area and see how that affects their daily decisions in what they are creating online,\u201d says Casey Fiesler, Ph.D. candidate in human-centered computing at Georgia Tech and the primary investigator in the research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study revealed several common legal myths about fair use that were strikingly similar among participants who represented different media types (fiction, art, video, graphics and music). These included:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EPerception of noncommerciality as the sole deciding factor of fair use.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;(REALITY: Courts use a four-pronged test to determine fair use; also, monetary gain doesn\u2019t necessarily forbid fair use of copyrighted content.)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EBlanket exception for educational use.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;(REALITY: There are no such blanket exceptions, although parodies have been tested in case law and more often than not were protected as fair use.)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EAddition of attribution as an explicit fair use factor.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E(REALITY: Giving credit to the original copyright holder is not required as part of the law, nor does it automatically protect the new creator.)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFiesler, who also holds a law degree from Vanderbilt University, says the problem with fair use is that it\u2019s decided on a case-by-case basis. She said: \u201cThe only way you ever know for absolute sure that something is fair use is if you are sued, and a judge says \u2018Yes, it\u2019s fair use\u2019 or \u2018No, it\u2019s not.\u2019\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearchers also discovered patterns of ethical judgments by participants that are related to fair use. These included:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EDistinction between \u201cprofiting\u201d from someone else\u2019s work and commerciality.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;In fan communities, even if money doesn\u2019t change hands, tangible benefits to the remixer\/fan creator are frowned upon.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EMore consideration for the \u201clittle guy\u201d with respect to market harm.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;The perception exists that individuals are less likely to obtain content illegally and more likely to attribute a source when the copyright source is a smaller artist.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EPotential for \u201cmarket good.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003EThis is a notion that remixes and fan works expose copyrighted work to broader audiences.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E-\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EImplicit attribution.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;This is an idea that attribution isn\u2019t necessary when the content source is obvious.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research indicates that many of the participants\u2019 ethical judgments likely stem from the social norms of larger fan communities that predate the Internet. The fandom community has a \u201cgift\u201d economy, rather than a commercial one, says Fiesler, and that helps dictate norms about how both the underlying works and the new works are treated.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhere the law is vague in what constitutes commercialization, the Georgia Tech researchers found that fan communities often extend the definition to any type of \u201cprofiting.\u201d One participant, for example, said that banner ads on a website with remixed work is profiting from the art and should be disallowed. Fan debates on what qualifies as profiting also help to keep the artists in line with legal doctrine.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhat the community typically believes and does can actually affect what is judged legal,\u201d says Amy Bruckman, professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and researcher on the study. \u201cSo it\u2019s in their interests to have cohesion to craft codes of best practice.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearchers also found that content creators receive uneven guidance on fair use from market leaders who publish their content. YouTube\u2019s Copyright School (a four-minute video for copyright offenders) features a cute woodland creature that attempts to push the fair use legal information off the screen when it appears. Fiesler says YouTube\u2019s approach might imply that fair use is too hard and that anyone considering it should get a lawyer or beware, a message that could have a chilling effect on how technology is used.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research study, \u201cRemixers\u2019 Understandings of Fair Use Online,\u201d will be presented at the 17th annual Association of Computing Machinery Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, or CSCW 2014, taking place Feb. 15-19 in Baltimore, Maryland.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn the age of mashups, fan fiction and content sharing, online media creation has spurred new complexities in copyright, effectively turning the legal concept of \u201cfair use\u201d on its ear, according to a new study from Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"In the age of mashups, fan fiction and content sharing, online media creation has spurred new complexities in copyright, effectively turning the legal concept of \u201cfair use\u201d on its ear, according to a new study from Georgia Tech."}],"uid":"27592","created_gmt":"2014-02-18 10:17:03","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:15:55","author":"Joshua Preston","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-02-19T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-02-19T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"277021":{"id":"277021","type":"image","title":"Casey Fiesler","body":null,"created":"1449244151","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:49:11","changed":"1475894968","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:49:28","alt":"Casey Fiesler","file":{"fid":"198806","name":"casey_fiesler.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/casey_fiesler_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/casey_fiesler_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":57102,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/casey_fiesler_0.jpg?itok=bW0Bzq6K"}},"62589":{"id":"62589","type":"image","title":"Amy Bruckman","body":null,"created":"1449176382","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:59:42","changed":"1475894544","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:42:24","alt":"Amy Bruckman","file":{"fid":"191648","name":"ABruckman.gif","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ABruckman_0.gif","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ABruckman_0.gif","mime":"image\/gif","size":12605,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ABruckman_0.gif?itok=VvVpjVmo"}}},"media_ids":["277021","62589"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"114601","name":"Press Release"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71901","name":"Society and Culture"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJoshua Preston\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jpreston@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejpreston@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E678-231-0787\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jpreston@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}