On Feb 7, 2007, at 11:41, Jonathan Frome wrote:

> To pull clips from a DVD on a PC (from DVDs for which you own  
> copyright, obviously):

Hi Jonathan,

I don't think your parenthetical is exactly correct.  As previously  
discussed on this list, the copyright office has issued an exception  
to the DMCA (the law that makes it a crime to circumvent anti-copy  
protections):  if the copyrighted work is in the educational library  
of a film or media studies department, professors may circumvent copy  
protections in order to assemble clips for educational purposes.

In other words, most people on this list do not need to own the  
copyright for the DVD from which they are pulling clips.  Of course,  
I would be interested in how broadly the copyright office defines  
"library" and "professor."  (And, for that matter, "educational,"  
"film," "media studies," and "department.")

But it is certainly not limited to the works for which you hold  
copyrights.  For the specific exemption, see http://www.copyright.gov/ 
1201/.

--Bill

Bill Kirkpatrick
Visiting Lecturer
Department of Communication Studies
University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
(734) 929-0209
[log in to unmask]

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu