2/13/10

This week I had the pleasure to visit my public library for the entire day. I shadowed the teen librarian. She told me her "copyright story" (to put it in her words). She did a teen program that involved "her kids" (her words again) acting out scenes from a book. They put the resulting product on YouTube, but the site banned the video. This was because they used the instrumental part of a song by the band Sixpence None the Richer. She contested this banning with YouTube because she believed that she was within the guidelines of the "fair use" policy. The instrumental part of the song (used for approximately ten seconds in the video) was used for a non-profit and educational purpose. As a result, YouTube put their video back online, but forwarded the matter to Warner Bros. Company to decide if they would sue her or not. It has been almost a year and she has not heard anything else about it. She said that copyright infringement is certainly a difficult matter, but experience and advice from her peers has helped her make her decisions.