Fair Use School: A Reply to YouTube’s Copyright School

Last April, YouTube came up with a new way to help its users understand copyright law. Alleged infringers would be required to watch Copyright School — a short, humorous clip in which everyone’s favorite cartoon characters, the Happy Tree Friends, explain the finer points of copyright law. That’s all good as far as it goes. But the advocacy group Public Knowledge pointed out that the video tended to gloss over an important question for many YouTube users, and that is fair use. Public Knowledge challenged their members to come up with a response video that explains fair use, and how, in some cases, making use of copyrighted material without permission is perfectly legal. Here’s the winning entry, from Patrick McKay:

To learn more about your rights if one of your videos is removed from YouTube, check out EFF’s guide to YouTube removals.