The Rules of Play: Copyright and Fair Use in Machinima

Machinima creators work with existing content (much of it copyrighted) from both in-game and out-of-game sources, like music, photographs, and video to create original, expressive works. These new works may comment on the underlying material, society in general, or may just be for fun. Copyright law has features that permit the use of copyrighted works without permission, under certain conditions. Fair use is the most important of these features. How does fair use apply in the machinima context? What are some guidelines machinima creators can use to decide when they are within the bounds of fair use and can used copyrighted content without a license? This panel will focus on these issues.