People Of Color Bypass Hollywood, Use Internet To Host Their Music, Films And TV. In Why storytellers of color ignore usual gatekeepers, take a chance on the internet, NPR examines how diverse voices in music and film are using online platforms like Vimeo, YouTube and Netflix to bypass traditional entertainment industry gatekeepers. In 2014, 90% of cable shows had white directors, and 87% of lead film roles were filled by white actors. “Hollywood is not providing diverse audiences what they want, “said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA and author of the Hollywood Diversity Report. “So people are going elsewhere, i.e. the internet. Let’s face it; audiences now are becoming overwhelmingly diverse.”
Metropolitan Museum Of Art Increases Online Access, Waives Copyright To 375,000 Art Images. “To make the museum as accessible as possible, we need to ensure that the collection exists in those online locations where people already go for doses of creativity, knowledge, and ideas,” said Loic Tallon, the Met’s chief digital officer, in a blog post announcing the Metropolitan Museum of Art waived all copyrights to more than 375,000 images of public domain artworks in the collection. Vogue reported the Met partnered with Creative Commons, Pinterest, Google Cultural Institute, Artstor, Wikimedia and other organizations to not only permit, but encourage, users to explore the collection.
Who Can Copyright The Whos Of Whoville? The producers behind the play “Who’s Holiday” are seeking a declaratory judgment that their dark comedy about a grown-up Cindy Lou Who is protected by the fair use doctrine, reported Law360 in The Show Must (Not) Go On: Theater’s Copyright Woes. A parody of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” the play was prevented from a December 2016 run after Dr. Seuss’ estate issued a cease-and-desist order. The producers filed the complaint, writing: “The play does not copy ‘Grinch’ verbatim, quote substantial (if any) portions of the text of ‘Grinch,’ or copy the illustrations in ‘Grinch.’ The highly transformative play contains original dialogue, a newly devised plot, and the structure, tone and themes of the play are materially different from that of ‘Grinch.'”
Publishers Force Students, Libraries To Pay Fees For Academic Works. The Association of American Publishers is pursuing a decade long court battle with Georgia State University for copyright infringement of academic work. Professors had placed excerpts “on reserve” so students could access the material without needlessly purchasing the entire book. The Association of Research Libraries and Electronic Frontier Foundation released a fair use analysis this week that explains a court ruling against universities would “undermine the fundamental purposes of copyright, not to mention both the public interest, and the interests of the authors of the works in question…Copyright is supposed to help foster the creation of new works. Requiring university libraries to devote even more of their budgets to licensing fees will have the opposite effect.”