I don't know if you caught this news: http://www.current.org/indies/indies1205indie-lens.html It shows that PBS's choice to basically kick the two series that showcase independent work off the main schedule, by moving them to the one day a week local stations program their own material, has had devastating consequences for carriage. This has implications for any independent filmmaker and anyone training to be an independent filmmaker. Indie filmmakers are signing on to an open letter to PBS at http://kartemquin.com/news/4425/taking-action-pbs-needs-independents . You could sign, if you're a filmmaker, and also tell your students and networks, FB and tweet the news. Also, watch for a NYTimes article by Elizabeth Jensen on Monday on this issue. You could tweet/FB that too, and you could also get in early (it'll go up Sunday night) and register your comments on the site. -- Pat Aufderheide, University Professor and Director Center for Social Media, School of Communication American University 3201 New Mexico Av. NW, #330 Washington, DC 20016-8080 www.centerforsocialmedia.org [log in to unmask] 202-643-5356 Order Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, with Peter Jaszi. University of Chicago Press, 2011. <http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Fair-Use-Balance-Copyright/dp/0226032280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1321544105&sr=8-2> Sample *Reclaiming Fair Use! * <http://centerforsocialmedia.org/reclaiming> Early comments on *Reclaiming Fair Use:* "The Supreme Court has told us that fair use is one of the "traditional safeguards" of the First Amendment. As this book makes abundantly clear, nobody has done better work making sure that safeguard is actually effective than Aufderheide and Jaszi. The day we have a First Amendment Hall of Fame, their names should be there engraved in stone. --Lewis Hyde, author, *Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership* “*Reclaiming Fair Use* will be an important and widely read book that scholars of copyright law will find a ‘must have’ for their bookshelves. It is a sound interpretation of the law and offers useful guidance to the creative community that goes beyond what some of the most ideological books about copyright tend to say.”—Pamela Samuelson, University of California, Berkeley School of Law "If you only read one book about copyright this year, read *Reclaiming Fair Use. *It is the definitive history of the cataclysmic change in the custom and practice surrounding the fair use of materials by filmmakers and other groups." --Michael Donaldson, Esq. Senior Partner, Donaldson & Callif, Los Angeles. ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.ScreenSite.org