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