Filmmaker by Day - By night she fought for fair use
In the tradition of "Understanding Comics" and with a look akin to Crypt Keeper and Mad Magazin The Duke Center For Public Domain is releasing a comic book to explain the copyleft movement, problems with intellectual property laws in todays world with its effect on the arts all revolving around a case study of a filmmaker. The comic will be released under a Creative Common License and sold through amazon for about $6 - no word on if it will be available for free pdf download.
A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the Rocky theme tune. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? "Eyes on the Prize", the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the subject of – yes – a new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Find out more about the law, and decide what kind of rules you think would be best for the arts.
via boingboing