A few days ago I was approached by a student who is working on her MA thesis. She is not one of my students, but had been pointed in my direction by a colleague. She had recently had a conversation with the administrative official who must approve all theses in the college before they are officially deposited with the university. This administrator told said student that although the main point of her thesis was to provide a critical analysis of a film she was not allowed to use any still/screen shots of the film in her thesis unless she got permission from Sony, whether or not she provided the appropriate citation for the stills. Rather than being able to show her readers the scene that she was analyizing, she was told she’d have to explain it all in a textual format because–wait for it– “that’s what theses do.” ARGH!
WHERE DO THESE ADMINISTRATORS COME UP WITH THESE IDIOTIC RULINGS? (Yes, this makes me very mad!) How is taking a still from a movie any different than taking a quote from a text? The student was not asking to reproduce the entire film in her thesis, rather she wanted to take 4 or 5 screen shots of particular moments in the film for the sake of analysis, which according to the US Copyright Office is legal under the Fair Use Doctrine:
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. (emphasis added)
What makes me even more upset is although this student was glad to hear she was right and the administrator was wrong, she didn’t feel like she could rock the boat by challenging said administrator’s ruling; after all, he still had to approve her thesis before she could graduate. I offered to sit down with her and craft out a well reasoned argument that she could take to her chair or the administrator; I even offered to have a word with both of them on her behalf, but she felt uncomfortable with either of these options. So, this student is going to go forward writing her thesis using only text knowing that she should be able to use visual elements. All because one administrator is misinformed, uninformed or just scared by the big bad corporations.
Sad, very very sad.
Source
US Copyright Office–Fair Use. (2006). Retrieved May 13, 2009 from http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html.
