OTW Board members Rebecca Tushnet (Chair of Legal) and Francesca Coppa (Chair of Communications and Vidding History) as well as TWC review editor Tisha Turk went down to Washington DC on May 7, 2009 to testify at the DMCA Hearings on Noncommercial Remix.

Rule 1201 of Copyright Law prevents the circumvention of copyright protection systems (e.g. makes it illegal to rip DVDs or to hack your cellphone) but also requires the U.S. Copyright Office to hold hearings every three years to find out of this prohibition is adversely affecting anyone. In 2006, the Copyright Office granted an exemption to film studies professors, because the case was made that these professors need to rip DVDs to make high quality clip compilations to teach their classes. This year, there were a number of new proposed exemptions, including: educators beyond film studies professors (including K-12 teachers), documentary filmmakers, and vidders and other non-commercial remix artists.

The OTW previously submitted a reply comment in support of the Electronic Freedom Frontier’s (EFF) proposed exemption for vidders and other remix artists. Tushnet, Coppa, and Turk went down to support this comment with live testimony. As you might have seen across the internet, the other side—MPAA, studios, the people who make encryption technology, etc.—suggested that instead of ripping, professors, remixers, documentary filmmakers and others make clips by filming a flat screen with a camcorder.

For More Information

• Audio files/podcasts of the hearings are available at the U.S. Copyright Office’s website and mirrored by the EFF on iDisk. (Our statements are part 2, the Q&A is part 3.)
• Rebecca Tushnet liveblogged the hearings: read the part about noncommercial remix.
• Wendy Selzer of chillingeffects.org posted about the hearings and also livetweeted them.
• Patricia Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media at American University also blogged about the hearings.
• Fred von Lohmann of the EFF published a YouTube video summarizing the issues, focusing on the OTW and Rebecca Tushnet (“She’s Awesome”). He also blogged his legal analysis.
• Rashmi Rangnath weighs in at publicknowledge.org.