“A Disgrace to the Forces of Evil”

Although it is available from lots of sources, I can’t resist adding a reference to the “A Fair(y) Use Tale” video to this site.  This 10 minute remix video, constructed entirely from Disney cartoons, offers a very clever explanation of copyright and fair use while at the same time asserting the latter as the justification for the whole creation.  It could provide a valuable resource for teaching students about copyright and fair use; its evident bias in favor of aggressive fair use provides a needed balance to the one-side educational material offered by the content industries.

The video, which was created by Bucknell professor Eric Faden, is available on YouTube, of course, or through the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society web site (which is the link provided above).  The presence of Stanford Law School as a host site may prevent the promiscuous use of take down notices to suppress this amusing and important work; as the video itself says, Disney is notorious for using its copyright to intimidate others and Stanford may be indicating its desire to push back some against that practice.

Be sure to read the “FBI Warning” at the beginning of the video; it is not at all what we are used to seeing on commercial videos.  And listen for the quote used to title this post, which is part of the explanation of fair use.

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