I just got back from Sheffield Doc/Fest and boy o boy, do I feel bad for UK filmmakers! The “clearance culture” as the folks at the Center for Social Media call it, is totally out of control. It is so bad that I at one point an Irish filmmaker told me that the UK has no such thing as “fair dealing,” which is akin to “fair use” in the US. Though fair dealing is commonly acknowledged to be less flexible than fair use, it does exist and from my brief reading of it, it does apply in some common situations filmmakers find themselves in, such as incidental capture and quoting for the purposes of review. And at least here in the US, before all of the work around fair use, filmmakers knew that the permissions culture had gotten out of hand. To that wondering filmmaker, I explained a little bit about fair use, but clearly he is working in a system that even if he understood his rights, he would be beholden to highly conservative business affairs folks.

It was great that the Sheffield organizers invited James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins from Duke University Law and authors of Bound by Law? to speak at an Industry Session, but it was problematic because a.) UK law and US law differ and Boyle and Jenkins hadn’t prepared even an addendum to help the European filmmakers understand where US and UK law are similar, and b.) they didn’t address how filmmakers here in the US articulated their rights through the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use and the process by which they lobbied business affairs and insurers to accept their findings.

They discussed Bound by Law? which is a great tool for understanding law as it applies to filmmaking, but what I think UK filmmakers need an organization that will step up to the plate, as the Center for Social Media did, to help filmmakers articulate fair dealing as it applies to working in the UK and to garner support among the various organizations that support filmmakers. I heard over and over at screenings that films had to be cut down because makers couldn’t afford the rights. What a shame for culture in the UK.