Guest post by recent USC Law grad Rom Bar-Nissim ’13, who was on the legal team on the brief.
Advocacy
IDA is at the forefront of protecting and advancing the legal rights of documentary artists, activists and journalists. Recent efforts have focused on promoting net neutrality, fair use and government arts funding, as well as defending filmmakers’ first amendment rights.
DMCA Exemption for Documentary Filmmakers
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it unlawful to rip from DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and many other encrypted technologies to prevent unauthorized access to copyrighted works. The law blocks filmmakers' ability to make fair use of invaluable footage. While fair use allows us to use copyrighted footage, the DMCA restricts our access to such material. Since 2010, IDA and its Board of Directors members from the University of Irvine (UCI) Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic and Donaldson + Callif have represented a coalition of major independent filmmaking organizations in the effort in protecting documentary filmmakers' exemption from the DMCA.
Other work
Organizations urge Congress to reduce risk for independent filmmakers.
On 'Super Size Me' and 'The Corporation'
On Monday, February 4, 2013, IDA filed comments with the United States Copyright Office regarding orphan works, or materials for which the original copyright owner cannot be contacted. These comments, which the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic and attorney Michael C. Donaldson
Nearly a hundred years ago, William Allen White, the iconic writer and spokesperson for small-town America, wrote, "If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own... how much kinder, how
"Telling Stories that change the world," emphatically defines the mission of GreenTreks Network, Inc. In partnership with KRCB Television 22 in Rohnert Park, California. GreenTreks sponsored the 2004 PBS series Natural Heroes. The series won a platinum Telly Award in the Film/Video category of
Michael C. Donaldson, former IDA President, is an entertainment attorney based in Los Angeles and is the author of Clearances and Copyright You may recall that the IDA joined a number of other independent film organizations to work with the US Copyright bOffice on the knotty problem of "orphan works
A review of the book 'Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada'
A profile of the Ninth Street Independent Film Center.
The Center for Social Media was launched last fall at the American University School of Communication in Washington, DC, which is, of course, a hotbed for political discourse, social activism, public sector policy making—and documentary making. With PBS, Discovery Networks, National Geographic and C