The New York Times has a great story about the painful process a college professor went through to clear the rights for a short, informative video to be given to incoming students:

“It’s crazy,” Professor Turow said of the labyrinth of permissions, waivers and fees he navigated to get the roughly three minutes of video clips included on the CD, which was paid for by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The process took months, Professor Turow said, and cost about $17,000 in fees and royalties paid to the various studios and guilds for the use of clips. The film used ranged from, for example, a 1961 episode of “Ben Casey” to a more-recent scene from “ER.”

As a result of the project, this Friday the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania will be holding a conference called Knowledge Held Hostage that will explore issues of Fair Use in education. The full program features Creative Commons co-founder and board member Hal Abelson. [via furdlog]