In the comic, it follows a woman who seeks to make a documentary on the lives of New Yorkers. Rather they be any random person or the elite of wall street. Yet she is plagued by an impasse. What can she legally have in her documentary due to copyrighted material. Relating it to a minefield since she would only really now exactly what couldn't be used after it was featured intentionally or unintentionally. Even if it was under fair use, there is the potential that the right's holder may not deem her project to fall into that category. Thus making her project extremely difficult to create without accidentally featuring copyrighted material.
This is the circumstance that many people are facing in our current consumer world. Recently this was a big issue for content creators on YouTube. For those who don't know, people can make a living off of making YouTube videos, a comfortable one too. Yet recently, an automated program implemented by the YouTube developers would take down videos and re-upload them under the right's owner name. Now for those who would upload "let's play" of video game footage, this was a major issue. Since this was their product that a retail store would sell. Even though the videos where under fair use, this was a mass problem for them. Some companies would even say publicly "you can upload videos of our game," content creators would still have an issue since some other company may hold rights to the music, a certain sound bit, etc. Making them have to essentially become a legal expert, involve a lawyer, or simply concede to the claim of ownership.
This is the circumstance that many people are facing in our current consumer world. Recently this was a big issue for content creators on YouTube. For those who don't know, people can make a living off of making YouTube videos, a comfortable one too. Yet recently, an automated program implemented by the YouTube developers would take down videos and re-upload them under the right's owner name. Now for those who would upload "let's play" of video game footage, this was a major issue. Since this was their product that a retail store would sell. Even though the videos where under fair use, this was a mass problem for them. Some companies would even say publicly "you can upload videos of our game," content creators would still have an issue since some other company may hold rights to the music, a certain sound bit, etc. Making them have to essentially become a legal expert, involve a lawyer, or simply concede to the claim of ownership.