Critical Commons is an online repository of user-generated media. The archive is a project of the

Media Arts and Practice Created in 2013, Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) is the seventh degree-granting division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Degrees and Programs The division offers two primary degree programs: a BA and a PhD in Media Arts + Practice. The PhD pro ...

division of the

USC School of Cinematic Arts The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Sc ...

. The project supports the

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

of copyrighted media by educators.

History

Critical Commons was established in 2008 by Steve F. Anderson and is an ongoing project of the

division of the

. Critical Commons was designed by

Erik Loyer Erik Loyer is a digital artist whose work examines identity and memory in the context of new modes of communications afforded by media technologies. History Loyer began his work at The Voyager Company, and has done professional interface design wor ...

and developed using the free software video sharing system

Plumi Plumi is a free software video sharing content management system developed based on the open-source content management system - Plone. Plumi allows users to create a video-sharing website by adding it to an existing Plone instance. The software ...

by the Asia-Pacific based

EngageMedia EngageMedia is a not-for-profit Video for Change organization that was co-founded by Anna Helme and Andrew Lowenthal in March 2005. The organisation focuses on creating social change through the distribution of human rights and environmental video ...

and the Greece-based design collective Unweb.me. The site was launched with funding from the

Macarthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

's Digital Media and Learning Initiative and is part of an ongoing debate within higher education about the need for

limitations and exceptions to copyright Limitations and exceptions to copyright are provisions, in local copyright law or the Berne Convention, which allow for copyrighted works to be used without a license from the copyright owner. Limitations and exceptions to copyright relate to a ...

Project background

Critical Commons makes use of the exemptions to the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...

(DMCA) that allow educators to circumvent the

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

of encrypted DVDs and downloads from online sources. Critical Commons utilizes the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA granted to

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

s (ISPs) who have limited liability for potential copyright infringement by users. Media in Critical Commons is contributed by users who must add

transformative In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright. Tr ...

commentaries to their uploads in order for them to be viewable. Once a piece of media is publicly available, registered users can post additional commentaries or create lecture-style playlists of media that are placed within a critical context. The archive contains over 7500 media clips, still images and audio files accompanied by text commentaries. Media content posted on Critical Commons is widely embedded in electronic journals and media supplements for scholarly publication and classroom use.

References

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External links

Section 1201 Exemptions to Prohibition Against Circumvention of Technological Measures Protecting Copyrighted Works
Organizations established in 2008 University of Southern California Image-sharing websites Media studies