Fair Use

Tupac Resurrection is an eerie film in that the opening scene is narrated by the deceased person it depicts. The film goes on to use clips and images from Tupacs life and his influences to tell his story. This film is a mashup of epic size. It uses photos, audio, interviews, music, and clips from life defining television shows to get its message to the audience.

With numerous uses of copyrighted material, one has to wonder how Lauren Lazin was able to use all that material. According Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, as noted in an article on the Center for Social Media, because the film uses the clips to tell its own story, because the clips take on a new meaning in the context of the documentary, are protected under fair use. The article also argues that many of the mashups created online fall under the same category, however, they seem to fall victim to copyright rules and are pulled from sites because the site owners fear the work might infringe on someone else's intellectual property.

Lauren Lazin, however, did one thing many of the online mashups seen today do not do. She obtained permission to use the copyrighted material in her work. As stated at copyright.gov, "The safest course is always to get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material.The Copyright Office cannot give this permission."

Are mashup artists approaching the appropriate copyright holders in order to reproduce material? Is it the mashup artists responsibility if the creation is obviously not intended to infringe upon a copyright? If obtaining permission from a copyright holder were necessary for any reproduction, would this overwhelm the copyright holder? If the copyright holders could charge for the fair use of their creations by threating to withhold a copyright, would they? Could this create a new market (aside from the one where the copyright holders are sueing for infringement)?