The background is owned

Christopher Sims started shooting his film about Army recruiting for the Iraq war in spring 2002. He'd love for you to see it, but you can't. He's still trying to figure out what footage he's allowed to use without being sued. And that's his own footage, that he shot himself.

Turns out that in the background of some of his shots were corporate-branded paraphernalia and other copyrighted elements. He wasn't trying to shoot this stuff--it was just present where he needed to shoot. It was incidental. But that doesn't matter. A corporation can (and often will) sue simply because you caught a trademark or copyrighted media product in the background of a shot.

As Christopher points out, it didn't used to be this hard to make a doc. Partly because the cultural terrain wasn't as dense with land-mines.

If you're a media corporation, and one of your primary goals is control, it's a great trick. Clutter every part of our lives with logos, advertisements, video, music and other media--and then demand veto power when someone tries to document the world. Because you own it. At its most extreme, this scheme would require everyone who ever made anything about the world around them to get permission to share their work.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there.

See Christopher Sims' short movie about his experience.

Check out the other finalists in the Duke Law Moving Image Contest.