The MPAA will soon be able to block Americans' access to any website, unless we

[Chai]

http://www.americancensorship.org/

[Rubystars]

This copyright stuff has really gotten out of hand. You know some musicians and tv shows allow their content to be used for artistic purposes, and derivative works as long as nobody profits from them. They still maintain their copyright legally but they don't have to enforce it in such draconian ways to keep it intact against people who would profit from them.

I have a friend who likes to make music videos from her favorite tv shows. She's really good at it, much better than anything I've ever been able to do (although she's had a lot of practice and has gotten really good at it over the years). She'll take clips from the show (she's been making Dr. Who vids lately, but also makes other show's stuff) and match them to music, and it sort of creates a new story or focuses on one aspect of the character, etc. They are really cool to watch how she can make something that seems completely new from the existing material. I would be so upset if she had to stop and I think a lot of other people would too. A lot of AMV type things are crappy but some, like hers, are really well done and cool.

[angryChineseKahanist]

Heil MPAA. And Heil King Obama.

[muman613]

There is always the FAIR USE clause which I believe to this day is still in effect. This allows a person to use Copyrighted material in a derivative work as long as credit is given to the original material and its purpose is to teach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work#The_fair_use_defense_in_derivative_work_cases

The fair use defense in derivative work cases

Even if a work is found to be an unauthorized derivative work, an alleged infringer can escape liability via the defense of fair use. For example, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., the Supreme Court found that although a parody of the song "Oh, Pretty Woman" by 2 Live Crew was an unauthorized derivative work, fair use was still available as a complete defense. This case marked the Supreme Court's pointing to transformativeness as a major clue to application of the fair use defense to derivative works.

The defense of fair use has become very important in computer- and Internet-related works. Two 1992 Ninth Circuit decisions are illustrative.

In Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.,[10] the appellate court held that it was a fair use for owners of copies of video games, such as Super Mario Bros., to use Galoob's product the Game Genie to customize the difficulty or other characteristics of the game by granting a character more strength, speed, or endurance. Nintendo strongly opposed Galoob's product, allegedly because it interfered with the maintenance of the "Nintendo Culture," which Nintendo claimed was important to its marketing program.[11] The court held, among other things, that the fair use defense shielded Galoob's conduct. The court said that "a party who distributes a copyrighted work cannot dictate how that work is to be enjoyed. Consumers may use ... a Game Genie to enhance a Nintendo Game cartridge’s audiovisual display in such a way as to make the experience more enjoyable."

In Sega Enterprises, Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.,[12] the court excused Accolade from copyright infringement liability on fair use grounds. Nintendo and Sega produced video game consoles for playing video games. Each stored the games in plastic cartridges that provided game data to the consoles. By way of analogy, the Sega hardware console's “platform” differed from Nintendo's, as a Macintosh platform differs from that of a PC. Hence, a video game cartridge that works on one system does not work on the other. Sega and Nintendo sought to “license” access to their hardware platforms, and each company developed software "locks" to keep out cartridges that did not have the proper "key." Accolade sought a license from Sega for its key, but negotiations broke down over price. Accolade then decided to reverse engineer Sega's lock and key system. To do so, it had to download (copy) all of the computer code from Sega's product and disassemble it (translate it from 1s and 0s to a human-intelligible format). Accolade succeeded and began to market new video games that it independently wrote, which were capable of being operated in Sega consoles. This led to copyright infringement litigation, in which Sega alleged that the downloading was improper copying (reproduction) of Sega's code. The court held that Sega was trying to use the copyright in its computer code to maintain a monopoly over the sale of video games, to which it was not legally entitled. Accolade downloaded the computer code only to ascertain how the lock worked, so that it could make a key that would permit its games to work in Sega consoles. The court held that such a use was fair use: "We conclude that where disassembly is the only way to gain access to the ideas and functional elements embodied in a copyrighted computer program and where there is a legitimate reason for seeking such access, disassembly is a fair use of the copyrighted work, as a matter of law."[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Fair_use_and_fair_dealing

Fair use and fair dealing
Main articles: Fair use and Fair dealing

Copyright does not prohibit all copying or replication. In the United States, the fair use doctrine, codified by the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. Section 107, permits some copying and distribution without permission of the copyright holder or payment to same. The statute does not clearly define fair use, but instead gives four non-exclusive factors to consider in a fair use analysis. Those factors are:

    the purpose and character of your use
    the nature of the copyrighted work
    what amount and proportion of the whole work was taken, and
    the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.[19]

In the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth countries, a similar notion of fair dealing was established by the courts or through legislation. The concept is sometimes not well defined; however in Canada, private copying for personal use has been expressly permitted by statute since 1999. In Australia, the fair dealing exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) are a limited set of circumstances under which copyrighted material can be legally copied or adapted without the copyright holder's consent. Fair dealing uses are research and study; review and critique; news reportage and the giving of professional advice (i.e. legal advice). Under current Australian law it is still a breach of copyright to copy, reproduce or adapt copyright material for personal or private use without permission from the copyright owner. Other technical exemptions from infringement may also apply, such as the temporary reproduction of a work in machine readable form for a computer.

In the United States the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act Codified in Section 10, 1992) prohibits action against consumers making noncommercial recordings of music, in return for royalties on both media and devices plus mandatory copy-control mechanisms on recorders.

    Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions

    No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.[20]

Later acts amended US Copyright law so that for certain purposes making 10 copies or more is construed to be commercial, but there is no general rule permitting such copying. Indeed making one complete copy of a work, or in many cases using a portion of it, for commercial purposes will not be considered fair use. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits the manufacture, importation, or distribution of devices whose intended use, or only significant commercial use, is to bypass an access or copy control put in place by a copyright owner.[8] An appellate court has held that fair use is not a defense to engaging in such distribution.

[Rubystars]

Most AMVs are just there as fan works, they help promote the shows really. They don't necessarily teach anything but people don't make a profit off of them either.