The internet has made copyright issues complicated enough for filmmakers wanting to make money distributing their films. For documentary filmmakers, the issues around fair use and copyright have always been a counterbalance to their own impulse to protect their creative work. At SILVERDOCS this past weekend, panelists tried to sort out some of the emerging issues in the complicated arena of copyright law.

One issue that emerged is the challenge to actually get proper licences for works that because of digital duplication are now often difficult to trace to a legal source. USC School of Law Professor Jack Lerner suggested that a more streamlined version of copyright law that treated film and music in a unified way might be more effective for digital media.

Digital media could be an amazing resource tool if there were a way to digitize the many obscure, orphan, or rare film prints to create a kind of super media library. In a way, this seems like a natural project for the ever-expanding internet. However, as panelist Mark Lemmons of Thought Equity Motion suggested, it is unclear how it could be financed, given that the current paradigm seems to be internet=free (or at least, hard to monetize).

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