Archive:Peter Decherney (Summit 2006)

Peter Decherney is a media historian who studies the history of Hollywood and copyright. He is and Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

We should be able to make, have, show, and manipulate media. However, the DMCA defeated fair use. DVDs in university media department libraries and public domain works on DVDS are still encrypted.

Some important other organizations are the ICA (International Communication Association), the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and the SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies).

How is using a clip in a classroom illegal?

EFF boycotted the rule-making as having the bar be too high.

Arguments against fair use exemptions: licensing should be embraced. Any exemption and new technology, even editing clips, would destroy Hollywood.

Hollywood has always been very conservative and against new technology. They resisted sound, television (they were threatened by the anti-trust laws, which forced them to allow TV), VCRs (they went to the courts, and Congress made them back off), and computer animation. They can't see the future, and are afraid that every change will be the one that will kill them.

Today, unfortunately, there is more regulatory support of Hollywood in the form of the DMCA and DRM; it used to be that Washington pushed Hollywood to embrace new technologies.