Foxing Fox With Fair Use
When guerilla documentary filmmaking meets the Internet and political activism, sparks are sure to fly, and Robert Greenwald is certainly causing alot of those sparks with his new documentary about Fox News' republican bias, "Out Foxed". Fox News (the people famous for suing Al Franken for trademark infringement for his book title) is now hinting they might sue the filmmaker (or are they?), bringing an added focus to the issue of "fair use" in modern copyright law. Some of the expected copyfight pundits are weighing in, but this is something that filmmakers (especially documentarians) should be paying close attention to -- issues like the broadcast flag treaty and the INDUCE act from Senator Hatch are eroding the important "fair use" provisions that make media activism and social critique as vibrant as it is.
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