Fair Use without Fear: An Evening with Pat Aufderheide
Join members of Women in Film and Video DC, for a workshop by Center director Pat Aufderheide on how to employ fair use rights without fear. Sep. 7, 6:30 pm, Interface Media Group 1233 20th Street, NW Washington, DC Register today!

BOOK LAUNCH: Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright

Tuesday, September 13, 2011, 4:30pm
Washington College of Law, 4801 Massachusetts Ave, NW, 6th Floor Lounge
RSVP to klbieze@gmail.com
On September 13, 2011 Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide will host a book launch at the Washington College of Law for their new book, Reclaiming Fair Use: How To Put Balance Back In Copyright! Tributes, music, food and friends!

Aufderheide and Jaszi urge a robust embrace of a principle long-embedded in copyright law, but too often poorly understood -- fair use.  By challenging the widely held notion that current copyright law has become unworkable and obsolete in the era of digital technologies, Reclaiming Fair Use: How To Put Balance Back In Copyright from the University of Chicago Press promises to reshape the debate in both scholarly circles and the creative community

If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
The 2011 Human Rights Film Series is here! Please join us for Visiting Filmmaker Marshall Curry on Thursday, September 22.  We will screen If A Tree Falls at 5:30pm in the Katzen Arts Center, free and open to the public - so bring friends and family. The film will be followed by a Q&A with Marshall Curry and special guest. Check out the trailer!

Community Cinema Screening
The Center is again sponsoring the FREE DC Community Cinema series by ITVS.  Women, War & Peace, a bold new five-part PBS mini-series, is a comprehensive global media initiative on the roles of women in peace and conflict. A preview of the mini-series episode: Pray the Devil Back to Hell, will screen September 18 at the DCJCC and September 25 at Busboys and Poets. Join us for the story of the Liberian women who took on the warlords and regime of dictator Charles Taylor in the midst of a brutal civil war, and won peace. Reservations recommended.

Media That Matters™ in NYC
The Center is thrilled to be a presenting partner for Media That Matters™, Arts Engine’s outstanding curatorial project of the world’s best short films on some of the most important topics of our time.  This year’s collection will have its debut in New York City on October 27, 2011. For more information on this year’s collection of shorts, and panels & workshop events please visit at mediathatmattersfest.org, or email at festival@artsengine.net.

Human Rights Film Series
The Center for Social Media and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, are launching the twelfth annual Human Rights Film Series September 22! We have four outstanding films, three of which premiered at Sundance this January. We have also confirmed filmmakers for all screenings and will host additional AU experts to discuss the issues. Add these films to your calendar!

Vote for the Center's SXSW panel proposal on HTML5--Leading or Bleeding Edge?
The South by Southwest Festival in March, which puts filmmakers, geeks and musicians together, is a great place for social-issue filmmakers to ask themselves whether HTML5--a platform that allows seamless integration of film viewing and interaction--is ready for them or not. That's why the Center is proposing a panel, and we'd love you to vote for it. Voting closes Friday, Sep. 2, so do it today.

Viewchange.org Takes on Global Poverty
Social-issue documentaries will do nothing less than change the world. That's the argument Caty Borum Chattoo made on Mediarights.org just last month. Chattoo is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and friend of the Center. Her article illuminates how Viewchange.org is using documentary to end global poverty. Read more...

From Grief to Hope: 'Rebirth' Reflects on 9/11
Graduate Fellow Katie Bieze had the pleasure of interviewing filmmaker Jim Whitaker about his newest film, Rebirth, for the online edition of Documentary magazine.  They have generously agreed to let us republish the article on the Center’s blog. Read more...

Reclaiming Fair Use
Early reviews, blog comments and tweets about Reclaiming Fair Use have been flooding in. Check them out on the book’s very own Facebook page. Library Journal said that the book “deserves to be read by scholars, bloggers, documentarians, journalists, and everyone else, since we are all touched daily by copyrights." Learn more...

Fair Use and Academics
Conversation is building in higher education about academic rights to fair use. In Inside Higher Ed, the leading online news source for U.S. higher education, Center Director Pat Aufderheide discussed prevalent "Myths about Fair Use". Read more...

DMCA Exemptions
It’s time to protect the hard-won fair use rights that artists, professors, librarians and online video makers won three years ago at the Copyright Office. In 2008, they successfully argued that they should get an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s penalties for breaking encryption to access copyrighted material, if they are accessing it for fair use purposes... But every three years, these exemptions must be renewed.

The Fair Use Working Group at UFVA: Better Teaching Now
After the “Fair Use: In the Classroom, the Library and the Field” panel at UFVA, we were joined by a group of professors for a Fair Use Working Group lunch to discuss current issues with not only trying to encourage fair use in their students' work but practicing fair use themselves in their teaching. From the discussion, we have a lot of ideas for new resources to add to the fair use section of the Center for Social Media’s website. Read more...

Film Professors Fight for Fair Use
At the University Film and Video Association annual conference, keynote speaker Holly Willis celebrated both the Center and our new book, Reclaiming Fair Use. She was describing the fertile, recombinant creativity of today’s film and video students, all of whom need to understand their rights to use, reuse and repurpose existing culture. Read more...

Fair Use Question of the Month
This month's Fair Use Question features a discussion about the difference between parody and satire.  You can find this question and more in professors' Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's new book, Reclaiming Fair Use! Read more...

Fair Use at Work on Critical Commons
In his essay "The Duality of Emerging Media," Jesse MacKinnon uses classical film theory to analyze the formal trends associated with moments of emergence in cinema, television and video games. Taking advantage of the fair use-friendly publishing environment of Critical Commons, MacKinnon illustrates his thesis with numerous clips from early film, TV and games ranging from Lumiere to Knights of the Old Republic.

What’s Good DC? Debuts
Over the past year, the Center has been helping to incubate the Public Media Corps (PMC), an ambitious project of the National Black Programming Consortium designed to directly engage DC students and citizens in producing public media relevant to their communities. This summer, DC station WHUT aired What’s Good DC?, the PMC’s teen issues series, with future rebroadcasts scheduled once school starts. Learn more...

Mark Your Calendars: AIR to Launch Next Phase of MQ2
The Center's Senior Fellow Jessica Clark was instrumental in assessing the impact of the Association of Independents in Radio project, the Makers Quest 2.0. Now, she’ll be serving as the media strategist for the next phase of the project, which launches on September 15 with a new site, a new name, and a new challenge to stations and independent producers to connect with the entire public. Get an advance look at the project FAQ...

Vote for Public Media Sessions at SXSW
It’s that time again—the SXSW panel picker is up, and you have a chance to help choose the most promising sessions. Here’s a crib sheet for all of the proposed panels related to public media—vote or add your own.

Growing Up Female
Join former SOC Filmmaker in Residence Julia Reichert for a screening at AFI of her very first film - Growing Up Female on September 13. Made on a shoestring with an early DIY aesthetic, this film is now a classic of the Second Wave Women's Movement, the first feature documentary to come out of those halcyon days. To be screened with another of Reichert’s early films, Up Agaist the Wall, Miss America. Buy tickets...

14th UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival)

The 14th UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival) from October 21-30, 2011 Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, San Francisco and Stanford University celebrates the power of documentary films dealing with human rights issues, the environment, racism, women’s issues, universal education, war and peace. The theme for this year is EDUCATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT. Get the details...

Sundance Institute and Good Pitch
Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program is the North American partner for the Good Pitch. The invitation-only events bring together invited foundations, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, broadcasters and other media to expand the resources aimed at maximizing the impact of social-issue documentary. Filmmaking teams pitch their projects and associated outreach campaigns with the aim of creating a unique coalition around each film to accelerate its impact and influence. The Good Pitch will be September 24- 27th, 2011 in San Francisco. For more information please click here.

Shelbyville Multimedia
Why is the story of a Somali nurse-turned-Tennessean-meatpacker the focus of so much attention just before the 10th anniversary of September 11th?  Ask any of the congregations, community organizations and groups across the country that will be screening "Hawo's Dinner Party: The New Face of Southern Hospitality" this month.  They’re part of a multimedia community-building effort created by Active Voice to help build bridges between native born Americans and newly arrived people from Muslim-majority countries.

Media for Change
With support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in partnership with the Institute of American Indian Arts, Working Films, and the National Museum of the American Indian, Native American Public Telecommunications, Inc. (NAPT), presented a day-long workshop for Media Makers and Educators called Media for Change, in Santa Fe, NM, on August 19. To read more about this event, please visit NAPT's member blog.

What is the future of news?
In celebration of The Shorenstein Center’s 25th anniversary, they are asking aspiring journalists, filmmakers and avid media consumers to help us answer the question, "What is the future of news?" in a short video. Today's aspiring journalists have a vested interest in discovering today what the media may look like tomorrow. The winner of the video contest will receive $2,000 cash. Read more...