Hi guys

I'm shooting a promotional video for a school - some shots are in classrooms where the children will be using books and magazines. Some of the published materials state that they are free to be copied for educational purposes. Others state that they cannot be copied without the consent of the publisher.

Where do I stand with this do you think? Do I need to obtain consent from the publisher of every single book that features, even in the background, in the classroom shots?

Any advice really appreciated.

All the best

Peter

Virtually every thread like this ends up concluding that the only real way to assure you remain within the confines of the law is a consultation with an attorney.

I thought I'd skip ahead.

Virtually every thread like this ends up concluding that the only real way to assure you remain within the confines of the law is a consultation with an attorney.

I thought I'd skip ahead.

Tripp thanks very much - yep I guess the best bet would be for the school's own legal team to look into it.

You're not copying the books... you're merely SHOWING them in your film/video. This is NOT copyright infringement, and shouldn't present any significant problems.

Were you actually photographing the pages of the books or magazines, it'd be a different story.

And yes, you SHOULD consult an attorney

I worked for an organization once who's lawyers drew up guidelines for exactly this sort of thing. It was a list that told us the maximum amount of the frame that could be filled with different things, for example a trademarked logo on something we were shooting couldn't fill more then 10% of the screen, or if we were shooting a television it's screen couldn't fill more then 25% of the frame. Book covers and pages from a book were one of the items on the list. Once again though this was the opinion of these lawyers and what they thought would be defensible if we did get sued.

I also had a friend who did a similar type project, involving a promo video in a classroom with textbooks. To be safe he had book covers made up that were used on each and every book so you could not see the book's actual cover in his video.