Robert De Niro looks pissed. Mike Myers has just made an offensive comment about De Niro’s mole. “Are you talking to me?” De Niro sneers. The two movie stars proceed to argue, but they aren’t battling it out on the red carpet. They're fighting on the small screen in Christine Ancalmo’s parody, “Taxi Member.”

Ancalmo’s short film is a product of Pop Media, a digital video course at San Francisco’s Art Institute. The class focuses on making artwork from preexisting material. While recycling previous works is not a new approach to making art, using computers to do so is. According to course instructor John Davis, computer programs like Final Cut Pro have made it easier to manipulate audio and film footage. This new type of digital art also raises issues over fair use and copyright. “It all used to be analog and now I basically have my own video editing studio in my room,” says Tyson Washburn, one of Davis’ students.

According to Washburn, the computer has drastically changed the way art is made, especially when it comes to video. Computer programs allow the artist to jump back and forth between takes. Without these programs, the process could take hours.

Students and spectators trickle into the Art Institute’s half-empty lecture hall for a screening appropriately titled “Steal This Video.” The presentation showcases 16 short films by Davis’ students.

The lights dim and the screen briefly goes black. Scrambled black and white images of people appear accompanied by an intense collage of electronic sounds. The audience looks through the lens of a security camera as the people onscreen come and go, unaware they are being watched, in Washburn’s “Untitled.” For “Hitch,” Washburn combined footage from Alfred Hitchcock's films “Frenzy” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

While a lot of the footage used in these projects was taken from preexisting films or other materials, some of it was literally found. Washburn says he discovered the security tape footage used in “Untitled” on the street. He used the whole tape for that piece, simply editing the frames together with Final Cut Pro.

People cannot create art from works of others without running into copyright infringement issues. Davis says he tried to stress this as much as possible for his class, explaining that many of the films were parodies and satires, which are protected under the First Amendment.

David Greene, executive director and staff counsel for The First Amendment Project, says, "If it is done as a parody or has educational value, the artist can argue fair use" in court. It also depends on how much film footage is used. But the fair use argument isn't guaranteed to get you off the hook. “Outright stealing of someone's ideas or materials and calling them one's own for profit is not what I mean,” Davis says.

Preetam Mukherjee, digital media systems manager for the film studies and art practice departments at UC Berkeley, says artists walk a thin line when sampling the works of others. “Taking a film and editing it without consent for non-commercial purposes is also illegal, but it’s what studios are least worried about,” he says.

With the music and film industries cracking down on illegal downloads, “borrowing” copyrighted materials is risky and artists have little leeway to work with it. “By allowing artists to use copyrighted materials, the opportunity exists for critique and satire as a healthy way to investigate and understand the machinery of our culture," Davis says.

Davis maintains that all ideas aren't conceived without being influenced by something. "Nobody's idea or product comes out of some pure vacuum that they alone, without influence, conceive of," he says. "Everything is inspired by the vast interplay of culture and its massive influence on the individual."