Imagine There’s No Fair Use
Is there a multi-syllabic German word for the conflicted feeling that results when someone you’d prefer not to ally yourself with advances a principle you support? If so, it applies to the news that a judge has upheld fair use rights in a dispute between Yoko Ono and the producers of the film Expelled. The movie uses a brief excerpt of John Lennon’s classic anthem Imagine while critiquing its worldview.
(What exactly a shot at Lennon has to do with a polemic arguing that proponents of intelligent design are censored by the scientific establishment is a question I will leave to others sufficiently masochistic to watch the film. Sounds kinda off-point to me.)
But the validity of the filmmakers’ thesis is not at stake here. For a long time now aggressive rights holders have scared authors and documentarians from resorting to the fair use provisions. Unsurprisingly, they’d like to charge huge licensing fees even for short clips of material presented in the course of legitimate debate or critique. It’s good to see the intent of the legal concept upheld here.
Maybe someday publishers will even be ready to print the occasional still from a Godzilla movie without fear of a cease and desist from the notoriously litigious clearance office at Toho studios.