I believe that the two uses you describe fall under fair use. In academia we
have a substantial amount of freedom to use copyrighted material without
permission, if an adequate measure of common sense is applied to our
decisions.

If you go to Google and type “fair use checklist” you'll find several
versions of a checklist useful in deciding if a particular action is or is
not fair use. A judge will ultimately decide what is fair use. :-(

José A. Mari Mutt
Director or Graduate Studies
University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez


-----Original Message-----
From: etd-l Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matt
Barton
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 7:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ETD-L Digest - 26 Oct 2004 to 28 Oct 2004 (#2004-60)

I'm really enjoying and profiting from this discussion about fair-use of
images. However, I have some questions about other media.

For instance, I've heard that the film industry is notorious for coming
down hard on anyone trying to use snippets of film in documentaries and
the like. Assuming that someone was producing an ETD that featured film
clips--are there percentage rules here, such as "no more than eight
seconds," or the like?

Also, and this is even trickier. Let's say a student was writing a
dissertation on videogames, or interactive media of some sort, and
needed that code to make an important point. For instance, maybe they're
writing about Pac-Man, and actually need the reader to play the game
(embedded in an ETD) to understand the point. Perhaps the dissertation
is written like a Pac-Man game, where the reader has to play--maybe when
he or she eats the "power pills" in the corners, they get transported to
another part of the dissertation. Or, probably more realistically, maybe
a grad is in "videogame studies," and needs the code or access to
"illegal roms" to study some points or conduct some analysis. In short,
what about code, as in, enough code to function?

Matt Barton