The Open Video Conference looks like an interesting couple of days for anyone interested in online video and the future of open and participatory culture on the web. From their description:

Open Video is more than just open codecs. It’s the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online. The conference will showcase awesome cultural works, inspiring talks, and cool tech demos.

They have some great speakers like Clay Shirkey and Yochai Benkler and topics span a huge and fascinating spectrum: fair use, human rights and video, mobile journalism, art and technology and giving away films for free (Jamie King will be speaking about Steal This Film II, Brett Gaylor about Rip: A Remix Manifesto). I plan to be there and will report back. There will also be a live webcast.

Find out more about the Open Video Alliance and the ideas behind the Conference in the video below.

Archival Storytelling: A Filmmaker’s Guide to Finding, Using, and Licensing Third-Party Visuals and Music is a new book from the hard working folk at Focal Press who publish so many essential books on filmmaking. Copyright and clearance is such a minefield for filmmakers who are frequently faced with the double whammy of complex legal rules and enormous licensing expenses. This book is a great resource because it surveys the entire landscape from ethical/creative considerations to fair use to changes in the digital age, and the focus is always on the importance of telling stories. Which is what it is all about after all!

Archival Storytelling features roundtable discussions with people like Rick Prelinger, Claire Aguilar, Stanley Nelson and Sam Green and conversations with experts in the field like my personal hero, intellectual property law activist Lawrence Lessig. The inclusion of people from different disciplines – historians, archivists, lawyers and filmmakers – is very useful in conveying the complexity of the subject but there is also lots of good practical advice to help you get your films made. In fact, it may even make you think differently about how you tell your stories. After all, being able to draw on and build upon the creative output of others is a creative act in itself, and can lead to all sorts of delightful possibilities. Just think of the way music is creatively juxtaposed with images, or how archive can bring history to life or give us new perspectives on social issues. Not to mention contemporary mashups and other creative products of digital convergence culture.

Archival Storytelling focuses on American intellectual property law but it does also deal with legal issues in other countries, for instance fair dealing in the United Kingdom. The authors have kindly allowed us to include an excerpt from a conversation with Hubert Best, a partner at the law firm Best & Soames in London and an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property and media law. Best talks about British law and shows why fair dealing in the UK is so different to fair use in the US.

Download the extract here: archival-storytelling-conversation-with-hubert-best

The good people at the Center for Social Media have published a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Here’s what they say about it:

This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.

This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws, by way of analogy, upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses.

You’re not alone! But the Center for Social Media at the American University have some really helpful resources on their website. Check out the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in particular.

Note: This applies to the US, not the UK.