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Patricia Aufderheide reports that the Chubb group of insurance companies, “has now joined the group of insurers that recognize fair use claims for documentary filmmakers.” Chubb’s key requirement, as with the other insurers, is that a lawyer verifies that the filmmaker follows the Best Practices in Fair Use document distributed by the Center for Social Media.

And Viacom said they will “take steps to protect fair use on YouTube” according to a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But then, it took a lawsuit filed by the EFF and Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project on behalf of MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films (BNF) to get Viacom to see the light.

But that doesn’t mean every copyright holder will agree to accept CSM’s guidelines or follow Viacom’s lead. Jackson West, in an article for NewTeeVee, describes the problems Brett Hanover encountered with his film The Bridge, “the first feature film about Scientology.”

West writes:

The premise and script were helped by efforts from former Scientologists and anti-cultists to craft an allegorical critique of the Church of Scientology.

The movie features all sorts of insider references, including clips from videos produced by the church, church practices such as auditing, and even the church’s custom web filter.

A few weeks [after posting the film online], Hanover pulled the movie from his site and requested that other people who had posted it remove it also, with statement saying only “due to copyright issues, I ask that this film be withdrawn from circulation… Do not contact me concerning this film, I am no longer supporting it.” That statement, and all other traces of the film, have since been removed from his site, other sites which promoted the film and even the Internet Archive, which cited rights issues.

Longtime anti-Scientology activist Mark Bunker of XenuTV suggested that Hanover was pressured by the church to pull the footage, which certainly isn’t far-fetched. The church has a legacy of using copyright issues to try to silence opposition, relying on the DMCA to lobby everyone from Google to a Canadian ISP to purge documents and links to those documents it considers infringing or promoting infringement.

Did Hanover’s use fall under fair use? I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer and it looks like I’m not going to see the film. The Bridge might not be an example of future fair use battles. Or it might. West concludes:

If an organization like Scientology can use copyright law as a bullying tactic to censor video content like The Bridge, imagine what a national party, government or international corporate conglomerate could do.