This makes me equal parts sad and angry. you hit the nail on the head right here -"wouldn't Lee's work entice people to seek out the films he compassionately dissects and makes relevant to new audiences, thereby potentially making the copyright holders more profitable?" the same can be said for a music site (Pandora) that is in danger of disappearing forever because of rights issues that has introduced me to so much music that I NEED to buy, that I would've NEVER found had it not existed.

It boils down to this - corporations are holding on to their 20th century rules in a 21st century arena, and blind greed is stopping them from seeing the possibilities of making NEW money. yes, in regard to digital entertainment, the old ways of making money are in danger. But eyes have to be opened to the new ways, and some actual humane evaluation needs to be done before a devastating act, like the one done to Mr. Lee, is performed.

In regard to where this oeuvre can live, i think YouTube is on the way out since the big Warner pull and advance of other sites that offer better services. In a short time, it will be seen as the "myspace" to some other "facebook". But I think something special like Mr. lee's project should have a space completely separate from these sites altogether. Have a little fund raiser to pay for bandwith and I'm there.

I hadn't noticed before that Scott Macaulay at FILMMAKER MAGAZINE had two-and-a-half cents' worth, too: www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2009/01/some-thoughts-on-kevin-leeyoutube.php

Is there anything preventing Lee from obtaining permission to use these scenes/images? If they're as brief as you say, I doubt the copyright holders would be asking big money, if any at all once they understand Lee's project is non-profit and educational.

Is there anything preventing Lee from using his own webspace instead of using YouTube's? If revenue is an issue, surely such cinema-conscious folk as GreenCine, Facets or IFC could buy some ad space from Lee to help defray the cost.

Flickhead: "Is there anything preventing Lee from obtaining permission to use these scenes/images? If they're as brief as you say, I doubt the copyright holders would be asking big money, if any at all once they understand Lee's project is non-profit and educational."

They may very well be receptive to such requests. Then again, they may not. But in any case, I don't think the critic should ever have to ask permission to quote the text he's reviewing. Quoting in print means directly reproducing the words used in the author's original work. Quoting in the video essay format is essentially the same thing in a different medium, yet there is still a presumption that the critic (or any author of a digital text) must ask permission to quote work by the person he's criticizing.

There are a lot of amorphous aspects to this whole issue, and if they were cleared up legally and/or technologically then it could be a win-win for everybody.

For instance: fine-tuning the digital watermark technology so that it can distinguish between wholesale reproduction of a work (or reproduction without alteration/commentary) and stuff like what Kevin's been doing.

I was thinking it might also be a good idea to settle on some fixed percentage of a work that may be quoted without permission (say, 10% of the running time) as long as other criteria are met (the quotes are used in conjunction with written or spoken text, juxtaposed with other quoted material from other sources, broken up with interviews a la TV news, and so forth). (But of course, where does that leave the parodist like Goldentusk, who celebrates and also makes fun of pop culture landmarks in his operatic spoof videos? Every proposed solution creates a new problem, which is a big part of the reason why this issue can be so maddening to argue about.)

Regarding your second point: No, there's nothing stopping Lee (or me, or Jim Emerson, or anybody else doing these essays) from getting a dedicated space, and in fact we're working on that right now.

However, I do think YouTube's status as a de facto public utility in the information age obligates it to make common sense distinctions in cases like Lee's.

They should do this not because it's the right thing to do, but because their extremely conservative, "Don't bother me, kid" reading of the so-called "safe harbor" procedure, while designed to protect them from being named a party to copyright infringement, incidentally makes them a party to a different kind of crime: aiding and abetting another party that knowingly makes a false criminal charge against a fellow citizen.

If a mall owner tells a citizen, in plain view of hundreds of shoppers, "You are being ejected from this mall for all time because one of my tenants says you stole a sweater," the citizen can choose to go home and mope, thinking, "It's a private space, they can do or say whatever they want." But he can also demand that his accusers actually charge him with a crime and show proof that it was committed. If the mall owner and the tenant refuse, or if they go to court and it turns out there WAS no crime -- or if turns out to have all been just a misunderstanding -- then both the mall owner and the tenant could be looking at a raft of lawsuits.

Such suits will ultimately eat up much more of the accusers' time, and perhaps prove far more troublesome to them in the long run, than if they'd gone to the trouble of finding out what the citizen in question was doing and taken a moment to determine whether a crime had actually been committed.

As to Peter's point up at the top of the thread: I agree with just about everything you've said, but I want everybody to be cautious about this, "It's free advertising" argument. Not only that be a weak cover for real copyright violation (as I believe the countless YouTube channels offering nothing but stand-alone clips surely are), it encourages the public to think that as long as the work is positive in nature, a consumer guide, "you should buy this" type of thing, then it should be permitted.

What if I want to make a video essay about why a particular beloved classic sucks, and nobody in their right mind should ever have a copy in their house?

The copyright holder would be forty times more upset by a piece like that than if I'd done a piece talking about why a particular film is a masterpiece. But I should have the right to do both.

Fair Use protections have been so eroded since the 2LiveCrew 'Pretty Woman' case that it's a wonder they are ever even evoked now. I just had a clip automatically rejected when uploaded to YouTube because it had a fragment of copyrighted music in it. It's pretty clear that I am not going to make any money off a one minute YouTube clip, and no one is going to get excited about adding half of a song to their collections after stripping it from my video. What's the point of all this? The only possible upshot is that copyright owners get to control every possible use of their material, and every association that is made to it. That sort of protection is so damaging to the dialogue of secondary works and the commons- and the actual benefit to the rights holders is so abstract, that it simply isn't worth it for anyone.

Jeez... I'm getting a headache from what feel like unnecessary complexities in all this.