Gaia: The Integral Pod - Water Cooler - Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:45:23 GMT

Piercing the peer-to-peer myths: an examination of the Canadian experience

Canada is in the midst of a contentious copyright reform with advocates for stronger copyright protection maintaining that the Internet has led to widespread infringement that has harmed the economic interests of Canadian artists. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has emerged as the leading proponent of copyright reform, claiming that peer–to–peer file sharing has led to billions in lost sales in Canada.

This article examines CRIA’s claims by conducting an analysis of industry figures. It concludes that loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file–sharing activities. Moreover, the article assesses the financial impact of declining sales on Canadian artists, concluding that revenue collected through a private copying levy system already adequately compensates Canadian artists for the private copying that occurs on peer–to–peer networks.

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Full text of article

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Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:25:30 GMT

History doesn't repeat, but it sure rhymes an awful lot! :P

Liz sent me a link to a great 19 minute talk by Larry Lessig on this subject, which I highly recommend:

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://eugene.gaia.com — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:23:37 GMT

History really does repeat itself.

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:39:00 GMT

Eugene: In the end, any model that doesn't incorporate the creative participation of fans and other musicians just won't cut it. Culture is not something you can monopolize.

Right, and approaches to this issue have to accommodate new technologies and the way people use them. Speaking of vinyl...

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://eugene.gaia.com — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:08:48 GMT

Finding a balance between Fair Use and Copy Rights seems like a really difficult balancing act.

On one hand, an artist needs to make a living, on the other music has always evolved hiearchically. Trying to copyright the lower rungs of the ladder is just ridiculous.

What is really needed here is a new business model.

Digg ran a story a couple weeks ago, about Vinyl making a comeback. http://digg.com/music/Vinyl_May_Be_Final_Nail_in_CD_s_Coffin

You get the huge cover art, the warm sound of analog, and a coupon letting you download the mp3 version of the record for free. I can really see this business model taking off someday.

In the end, any model that doesn't incorporate the creative participation of fans and other musicians just won't cut it. Culture is not something you can monopolize.

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:17:41 GMT

from Boing Boing...avast!

Indie film producer thanks pirates for downloading his movie

Posted by Cory Doctorow, November 16, 2007 1:25 AM | permalink

Eric D. Wilkinson, producer of the independent film "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth," has written a letter to the editor of Releaselog, a site that reviews leaked movies available on P2P networks. He hasn't written to complain, mind -- he wrote in to say how much promotional value the piracy of his movie on P2P has generated, and how that's turning into real sales for him.

I am sending you this email after realizing that our website has had nearly 23,000 hits in the last 12 days, much of it coming from your website. In addition, our trailer, both on the www.manfromearth.com site and other sites like YouTube, MySpace and AOL has been watched nearly 20,000 times AND what’s most impressive is our ranking on IMDb went from being the 11,235th most popular movie, to the 5th most popular movie in 2 weeks (we are also the #1 independent film on IMDb & the #1 science fiction film on IMDb). How did this all happen? Two words: Torrent / File Sharing sites (well, four words and a slash).

Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

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Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:56:04 GMT

Pelle: Dude, you read it in a forum? It's been all over the news for the past week :)

~~~

hehehe - I am almost never exposed to conventional radio or TV, and don't tend to peruse general news sites...meanwhile, in another part of the kosmos:

Great news from Boing Boing:

Rucker's Postsingular is a free, CC download!

Posted by Cory Doctorow, November 2, 2007 2:45 AM | permalink

Rudy Rucker has posted his kick-ass, weird-ass post-cyberpunk novel Postsingular to the net as a free, Creative Commons-licensed download. I reviewed Postsingular when it came out earlier this month:

In Postsingular, a mad scientist creates a race of nants -- nanites -- that digest the planet and turn it into a computational simulation of Earth, called Vearth. However, an autistic child memorizes a long string of numbers that poisons the nants and causes them to reverse themselves (luckily, they're engaged in reversible computation) and put the planet back. That's the setup.
Some time later, another race of benign nanos are released on the earth, the Orphids. Orphids are mezzoscale computers that organize themselves into an intelligent global network, tapping into every human brain and giving people access to outboard cognition facilities, so that anyone can drop out, tune in, and become hyperintelligent. The orphidnetters are haunted by spooks from a parallel dimension, who seek to prevent them from using the smarts of the orphidnet to develop interdimensional travel.

This is one of the most fun, strangest, most thought-provoking sf novels I've read, and it's fantastic to have it show up on the net, ready to be copied and shared. Link

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Whoo-hoo! This Creative Commons thing is really catching on. Rudy Rucker is one of my favorite writers, too - I love his brand of zany mindbending weirdness. :)

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://pelle.gaia.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:17:42 GMT

Dude, you read it in a forum? It's been all over the news for the past week :)

I agree that it's a cool move...

Pelle

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:40:14 GMT

Let's hear it for Radiohead! I just read in an Ubuntu forums thread that they are letting fans decide what to pay to download their latest album:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...cnradio101.xml

Quote:

Radiohead to give away new album

By Angela Monaghan
Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 01/10/2007

Radiohead, the internationally renowned band, has taken the unusual step of telling fans that they can pay as much or as little as they like for the band's new album In Rainbows.

In a break from industry tradition the UK band famous for hits including Creep, Paranoid Android and Karma Police, has told fans "it's up to you" what they pay to digitally download the album.

This isn't the first time that an artist has opted to charge nothing for its album, but the move is significant because Radiohead remains one of the biggest bands in the world.

Radiohead is free to sell its album directly from its official website because it is no longer tied to a record label. So far the album is only available to pre-order from the website, where it can be downloaded on release on October 10.

While loyal fans are likely to want to pay the band something, customers could opt to pay as little 45p - the credit card handling fee.

The album is also available separately as part of a £40 box-set which includes the album on CD, two vinyl records, a CD with additional songs, photos, artwork and lyrics.

It is Radiohead's first album since Hail to the Thief, which was released in 2003 after which the band's contract with EMI/Capitol expired.

It is likely that many of its millions of die-hard fans will be unable to resist buying the box-set, available in December, while Radiohead will not be required to share its profits with either a record label or shops.

Radiohead could even benefit from those who ignore the box set and choose to pay nothing to download the album from Radiohead's online shop, where they will be required to register their details and therefore become targets for future marketing campaigns.

Free albums also drive demand for live tours, which translate to pound signs for the artists behind them. A great example of this is Prince, who in July gave away his album 3121 for free in the UK through the Daily Mail.

He subsequently announced 21 tour dates in London, all of which sold out.

Radiohead has the financial welly and is sufficiently well-known to be confident enough that the move is a risk worth taking, but it might also become an answer for those lesser known bands that struggle to be signed by a record label, or are reluctant to share their profits.

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Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:51:02 GMT

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:29:37 GMT

There are directories of work licenced under Creative Commons, as well as a way to search for such material using search engines like google (to find out more about how the latter works, click here).

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:18:00 GMT

The Fair Use Network looks like a great source of information on how fair use actually works (for those who really want to get into it). From their main page:

~~~

Why the Fair Use Network?

How much can you borrow, quote or copy from someone else's work? What happens if you get a "cease and desist" letter from a copyright owner? These and many other questions make "intellectual property," or "IP," law, a mass of confusion for artists, scholars, journalists, bloggers, and everyone else who contributes to culture and political debate.

The Fair Use Network was created because of the many questions that artists, writers, and others have about "IP" issues. Whether you are trying to understand your own copyright or trademark rights, or are a "user" of materials created by others, the information here will help you understand the system — and especially its free-expression safeguards.

If you have received a "cease and desist" letter from a copyright or trademark owner, or a notice from your Internet service provider about a "takedown" letter, you'll also find useful information on this site.

~~~

Of particular interest, the section on fair use of copyrighted works.

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:57:41 GMT

Cross-posted from a kindred thread on the 'plex.

Corey, although I was interested in this subject before, and had been exposed to such issues in the past - through my interest in netagivland, the open source movement, posts and blogs by Rommel, etc., this thread did much to spark my current semi-obsession with the subject. Thanks for that. :) I believe it is one of the most important issues of our times.

I've veered off on fascinating tangents (as reflected by various posts on this thread) and in particular the use of Creative Commons licensing schemes. Under CC you - the owner of any copyrighted work - can choose to give up some Arthur/adastra says:[quote]Corey, I've been interested in this subject before, and been exposed to these issues in the past - through my interest in netagivland, the open source movement, posts and blogs by Rommel, etc., but this thread has helped to spark my current semi-obsession with the subject - thanks for that. [:D] I believe it is one of the most important issues of our times.

I've been reading up on various aspects of this topic, in particular the use of Creative Commons licensing schemes. Under CC you - the owner of any copyrighted work - can choose to give up some rights to your work (hence the phrase "some rights reserved"). For example, you can specify that you automatically allow unlimited copying of the work, as long as it is copied in unchanged form and you are attributed authorship. Or you can explicitly allow people to modify the work, as long as they allow other people down the line to modify the resulting work ("share alike"). You can forbid use of the work for commercial purposes, or allow that. (My understanding is that CC licenses are non-exclusive, meaning you can have a non-commercial general license and also use your work commercially or negotiate a commercial contract with someone.) These practices enrich the media landscape for all of us.

Just last night I found out - by watching the entertaining and informative short videos at the Creative Commons website - that in the United States, the creator is automatically the copyright holder of their work the moment they make or record it (I had assumed that some process had to be gone through to establish such ownership).

This is very cool. It means that the instant someone writes or records something, they own that work with full copyright protection; and if they register under CC (a quick and simple process) - can choose to retain/relinquish various rights as suits their purposes and intentions.

Since you have been following these issues for some time, Corey, I'm wondering what you think about the CC scheme? Do you feel that CC licensing - which is evidently growing in leaps and bounds - will force change in the way copyright is handled in general? That is, if large numbers of people are consciously choosing to relinquish certain rights in ways that are much more flexible and permissive than the practices of the powerful corporate content providers currently in "inquisition mode," might this cause a sea change in the way the whole system operates? Founder's Copyright - in which people voluntarily retain copyright for 14 years and then release it into the public domain (in other words, the way copyright originally functioned) - is another infectious idea which might shift the playing field if it is widely adopted.

Also, how does I-I collectively feel - or what is the diversity of opinions - on CC licensing schemes with regards to integral material? Do you know of any integral authors who are using CC or Founder's Copyright for their material? Has there been any speculation on licensing AQAL Journal, the What Is Integral? PDF, or other basic material under CC?

I'm specifically asking Corey these questions, but of course I'm interested in what others have to say as well.

curiously,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:21:51 GMT

The following is from http://creativecommons.org/:

Science Fiction

Mike Linksvayer, September 10th, 2007

A couple weeks old, but worth reading: Cory Doctorow excoriates Science Fiction Writers of America for issuing takedowns on his behalf, without his permission, against sites hosting his books, with permission (under CC licenses).

Meanwhile, Cory blogs about another author’s science fantasy trilogy released under a CC license and is writing a column in Locus magazine on why SF writers should use CC.

One of the blog reactions to Cory’s SFWA kerfuffle Letting Crazy People Set Intellectual-Property Policy (citing other recent examples of “craziness” as well). Of course with Creative Commons you can set your own non-crazy policy. That’s not science fiction.

~~~~~

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:18:28 GMT

The $2.2 trillion fair use (U.S.) economy

Mike Linksvayer, September 12th, 2007

The Computer and Communications Industry Association has released a study claiming that the value added in the United States by industries dependent on fair use is $2.2 trillion dollars annually, or one sixth of the U.S. economy, apparently almost 70% more than than value added by copyright industries, as measured by other recent studies. From the release:

“As the United States economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, the concept of fair use can no longer be discussed and legislated in the abstract. It is the very foundation of the digital age and a cornerstone of our economy,” said Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA. “Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past ten years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our country”

The Fair Use exception to U.S. copyright law, as codified in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 states, “The fair use of a copyrighted work … is not an infringement of copyright.” Fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses such as search engines and software developers. As the study indicates, however, fair use and related exceptions to copyright are crucial to non-technology industries as well, such as insurance, legal services, and newspaper publishers. The dependence of industries outside the high-tech field illustrates the crucial need for balanced copyright law.

While the particular numbers arrived at by the study may be challenged (it is the first attempt to quantify the fair use economy in this way and the CCIA is composed of interested parties), the overall points highlighted above (emphasis added) are extremely compelling.

Given the demonstrated criticality of fair use to the economy and the steady diminishment of fair use, is there any reason to believe the current balance is optimal? Even moreso outside the U.S., where fair dealing and other exceptions to copyright are less liberal than fair use.

This is one place where Creative Commons comes in. CC licenses make it easy to grant permissions beyond the scope of fair use (and without ever restricting fair use), shifting the balance by completely voluntary action. This is not lost on leading companies in the fair use economy. For example, at least five CCIA members have provided support for Creative Commons — Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, Sun, and Yahoo!.

Those are huge, important companies, but a fraction of a $2.2 trillion fair use economy, and that’s not counting the world outside the U.S. Consider joining these leaders — your business, or your job, may depend on it.

Our annual fall fundraising campaign starts next month, so keep the above in mind.

If your company is or should be interested in contributing to our corporate commoner giving program, please contact our development coordinator at melissa@creativecommons.org.

~~~~~

The above post is from http://creativecommons.org/

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:19:42 GMT

I'm continuing to study the Creative Commons licensing schemes, and two I find particularly interesting are the Founder's Copyright, in which you retain full copyright protection for 14 or 28 years, after which point the material becomes fully public domain (this is closer to the way copyright originally worked), and the Developing Nations copyright:

Developing Nations

The Developing Nations license allows you to invite a wide range of royalty-free uses of your work in developing nations while retaining your full copyright in the developed world. For the detailed terms, see the Commons Deed and Legal Code below.

The Developing Nations license allows, for the first time, any copyright holder in the world to participate first-hand in reforming global information policy. The fact is that most of the world's population is simply priced out of developed nations' publishing output. To authors, that means an untapped readership. To economists, it means "deadweight loss." To human rights advocates and educators, it is a tragedy. The Developing Nations license is designed to address all three concerns.

Read more about the history of the Developing Nations license.

~~~~~

I love this idea, it could be such a powerful force for good in the world. It made me think immediately of what Moses has been telling us about how expensive and hard to get integral books are in Africa. How wonderful it would be if integral material were made available using a Developing Nations licence, so that it might become cheaper and more readily available for those in developing nations who are ready for it.

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:08:25 GMT

Check out this Wikipedia article on the Creative Commons project. From the article:

~~~~~

Aim

The Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

The project provides several free licenses that copyright owners can use when releasing their works on the Web. It also provides RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. Creative Commons also provides a "Founders' Copyright"^[1] contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.

All these efforts, and more, are done to counter the effects of what Creative Commons considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture. In the words of Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and former Chairman of the Board, it is "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past".^[2] Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.^[3]^[4]

^~~~~This page explains the various types of licenses possible under the Creative Commons scheme - there is quite a bit of flexibility in terms of what you allow people to do with your work.

And be sure to check out the official Creative Commons website. :)

This is great stuff. Whoo-hoo!

spiral out,
arthur

Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:49:33 GMT

Fairshare is another interesting scheme for making sure artists are compensated for their work, while fostering creativity and availability of creative works:

FairShare is an idea for a voluntary investment-based patronage system to replace patents and copyright while still insuring that artists are fairly compensated. It was designed by Freenet creator Ian Clarke, Steven Starr and Rob Kramer in response to allegations that artists would not receive adaquate compensation for their work without enforceable copyrights.

In the FairShare system, the investor/patrons would provide venture capital. Clarke envisions that 45% of the money invested in a given artist would go directly to that artist, while another 45% would be given to previous investors. The remaining 10% would be kept by the maintainers of each FairShare service company.

In some ways this model is similar to a pyramid scheme, but Clarke counters that a vital difference is that nobody would be promised a return on their investment. He argues that regardless of any profits, each patron would have the satisfaction of knowing that they supported an artist whose work they appreciate. Also, earlier investors would profit more, thus rewarding them for investing in artists before they became more popular. The early investors would serve a similar role to studios' talent scouts.

[edit] See also

Peer-to-peer

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Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:53:07 GMT

Let's throw Copyleft into this integral stew. From the Copyleft Wikipedia article:

~~~~~

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and is the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.

Copyleft is a form of licensing and may be used to modify copyrights for works such as computer software, documents, music, and art. In general, copyright law allows an author to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the author's work. In contrast, an author may, through a copyleft licensing scheme, give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme. A widely used and originating copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GPL). Similar licenses are available through Creative Commons - called Share-alike.

Copyleft may also be characterized as a copyright licensing scheme in which an author surrenders some but not all rights under copyright law. Instead of allowing a work to fall completely into the public domain (where no copyright restrictions are imposed), copyleft allows an author to impose some but not all copyright restrictions on those who want to engage in activities that would otherwise be considered copyright infringement. Under copyleft, copyright infringement may be avoided if the would-be infringer perpetuates the same copyleft scheme. For this reason copyleft licenses are also known as reciprocal licenses.

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Re: Integral Approach to Copyright/Fair Use?

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:25:24 GMT

Here's something from http://www.commondreams.org to throw into the stew:

Published on Friday, August 17, 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Media Critic Solomon Pushes Limits of Fair-Use in New Documentary

by Joe Garofoli

The new documentary “War Made Easy” isn’t just a searing critique of how administrations over the past 40 years have manipulated the media to build support for war. The 72-minute film is a media provocation itself - a challenge to federal copyright laws.

Based on a 2005 book by Bay Area media critic Norman Solomon and narrated by actor Sean Penn, roughly 90 percent of “War Made Easy” consists of archival news footage from major television networks that would cost a ton of money to license - if the filmmakers had paid for all of it; they bought only about 60 percent from distributors.

The filmmakers say they are protected under the “fair use” provision of federal copyright law, a measure that is being tested in ways unimagined when it was codified 30 years ago.

The film arrives at a time when some major media companies are rethinking the value of their copyrighted material and how much of it they’re willing to share with videomakers and documentarians like Solomon. While media giant Viacom is suing the online video-sharing site YouTube and its parent company Google for hosting clips to which Viacom holds copyright, other media companies are slowly loosening their hold as the gatekeepers of information.

Over the past few weeks, CNN, ABC and NBC have announced they will allow footage of the presidential debates that they broadcast to be used on other media platforms under certain conditions. For example, NBC requests that debate footage not be used for commercial purposes, that the network’s moderators or journalists not be used in campaign advertising and that its logo be prominently displayed when a clip is used.

But while some of those provisions sound similar to what’s in federal copyright law, what is fair use remains the subject of debate.

“The similarities in all this is that we’re all feeling our way in the digital era in the area of fair use,” said Patrick Ross, executive director of the newly formed Copyright Alliance, a Washington trade group whose supporters include movie studios, television networks and artists interested in preserving copyright protection.

The networks’ decisions “are fantastic for anybody who has anything to say about the presidential race,” said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at the Center for the Internet and Society at Stanford University. “What you’re going to see in this election cycle is an explosion of people expressing themselves in different ways using video. This is going to get more people participating in the process.”

After seeing how debate clips turned up on YouTube and blogs - and were mashed up into parodies - “the networks realized that you can either work with people or you can fight them,” said Jason Schultz, an attorney specializing in intellectual property law at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

“This also shows the power of popular marketing on the Internet. How word-of-mouth spread online is being recognized as a legitimate marketing tool,” Schultz said.

But the networks’ generosity with political debate coverage doesn’t extend to their entertainment content, where the big money is made.

Recently, unaired pilot episodes of new series like NBC’s remake of “Bionic Woman” and CW’s “The Reaper” found their way online through several video-sharing sites. Some in the television industry whispered that the networks had intentionally leaked the episodes to generate buzz for their new shows before they premiered on TV. Networks representatives vehemently deny doing so.

An ABC executive said his network wouldn’t leak a show online because it wouldn’t want to risk losing any viewers who might tune into the show’s broadcast premiere. The network, like others, doles out bits of its entertainment programming on its online site and on other platforms with the goal of luring audiences to its broadcasts - where ratings are measured and advertising dollars are made.

“I look at (sampling content for free online) in the same way that I see Coca-Cola sampling its product,” said Michael Benson, executive vice president of advertising, marketing and promotion at ABC Entertainment. “You give people a taste. You don’t give them a whole six-pack.”

Political programming is a different, less profitable, beast. Most presidential debates don’t draw the audience that a network entertainment show does - even for the show’s repeats.

Free content is being pitched as a civic offering, as CNN announced May 7: “The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process.”

In recent weeks, other networks - including NBC and ABC - have changed their policies to allow use of footage from the presidential debates. NBC’s policy went into effect after last week’s AFL-CIO debate in Chicago, which was broadcast on MSNBC.

Getting the networks to release their debate footage is a rare example of bipartisan media organizing; liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin joined forces to pressure the networks.

“We know that people are going to do it. This just legitimizes it,” said Mike Krempasky, a conservative who founded RedStateblogs.com.

But industry advocate Ross doesn’t think this will lead to the networks releasing more entertainment programs online.

“You don’t see NBC-Universal releasing ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ for free online because there is still a tremendous amount of value in that,” Ross said. “I’m not clear how much value there is in a political debate as the campaign wears on.”

Solomon, a media critic who has written 12 books, was dubious about the value of the debate footage, which he described as containing “an overdose of rhetoric and fogging language. What we are sharing with the public are the political equivalent of cooked books,” he said.

Even so, not every network is on board with sharing. CBS, which isn’t scheduled to broadcast a presidential debate until December, declined to comment on its plans. Fox News has no plans to offer unlimited use of its debate content.

“That, to me, is giving up too much control to somebody who didn’t create the content and who can then turn around and monetize it,” said Chris Silvestri, vice president of legal and business affairs at Fox News.

Silvestri hadn’t seen Solomon’s film, which uses content from Fox and the other major networks, nor had any other network representatives that were contacted. The question of whether to pursue legal action against a documentary “is always tricky in a fair-use case,” Silvestri said. If just a few seconds of clips are used in a larger, “transformative” way, as the law states, then that’s generally OK.

“But if more than that are used, that’s when it gets harder. Do you fight the fight? Or do you let something like this go? Every case is different,” he said. He invites documentarians to use whatever they think they can, “but they’d better be prepared to defend what they use in court.”

The financial considerations of fair-use law can be even murkier.

While “War Made Easy” was made by a nonprofit company, federal law prohibits the use of copyrighted material for commercial purposes. The film’s national theatrical premiere will be Aug. 24 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.

“The film is definitely a challenge to the fair-use laws,” said “War Made Easy” producer and co-writer Loretta Alper. “But we think we are on solid legal ground. This is criticism, and you can’t do criticism without showing what you’re criticizing.”

And there’s plenty of criticism in “War Made Easy.” It includes the 1968 clip of a commentary by iconic CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, a piece long-lauded for turning public opinion against the Vietnam War.

But it also shows a CBS news segment from 1965 when Cronkite accompanied U.S armed service personnel in Vietnam on a bombing mission near Da Nang. After his in-flight description of how the plane detonated its bombs on those below, Cronkite steps out of the plane, turns to a crew member and says, “Well, Colonel, it’s a great way to go to war.”

Some in audience groaned at the scene at a recent screening of the film at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.

Solomon describes Cronkite’s comment as part of a continuing legacy of the media “idolizing” the military during war. “You need to have the clips to show that in a continuum,” Solomon said.

And after a lifetime as a print journalist and author, Solomon has discovered “the visceral thrill” of video. Provided there are no lawsuits involved.