legal quesiton regarding music in your videos

[Stewart McDonald]

So what if I am just making a demo tape of a project that I want to send off to TV companies?

[Stewart McDonald]

Anyone? I'm not going to be making profit from a pilot, just put my foot in the door and to show the TV companies what I'm capable of.

[Gary Kelly]

Stewart,

I think it's pretty clear from the whole foregoing thread that 'profit' or lack thereof is irrelevant where the use of copyright material is concerned...

If the imagery or sound-track belongs to someone else, you can't use it (without permission or license).

All the video/multimedia work I do is Corporate, and the corporate legal types are twitchy enough about stuff I post on the company intranet for internal use only; they'd go ballistic if I violated copyright internally, let alone if I did so and it 'leaked' through the firewalls into the public domain. You wouldn't believe the 'approvals' I have to get just to release a 'talking head' interview with an executive (not just legal, but PR spin, HR policy, Sales and Marketing, corporate branding, blah blah blah).

I doubt very much a TV or prodco would be too impressed to see 'demo' material which clearly infringes copyright. I mentioned in my earlier post, there's a lot of *good* royalty-free imagery and sound-effects/music available from places like eBay...far better to be safe than very very sorry...

just my 2p!

[Stewart McDonald]

I did a 10 min short as a media project a while ago for my Media Studies assignment. I was told that we could use any music we wanted, but just had to give credit to the artists at the end of the piece. Wouldn't this be the same as providing a demo to a production company?

[Gary Kelly]

Stewart....

No, not in my humble opinion anyway.

See Paul's previous posts in this thread regarding educational use... your media studies assignment was clearly in an "educational" context (or at least, that would be your argument in court).

But sending a 'demo' to a Prodco is your way of saying "Hey guys, this is me and *my* work, buy me!" But if you're using copyright material, without permission or license, it's not *your* work at all (or rather, bits of it aren't).

It'd also be pretty embarrassing I reckon if the TVco or prodco you sent your demo to was a subsidiary of one of the entertainment conglomerates who actually held the copyright to any of the material you used.

Have a look at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html

And in the UK: http://clans.cla.co.uk/copyright.html

Where they sum it up nicely:

"Now that it is so easy to copy material, it is vital that we respect copyright so that more and more people produce the creative works which the information superhighway must carry if it is to add value to our lives."

Gary

[Dylan Couper]

<<<-- Originally posted by Stewart McDonald : I did a 10 min short as a media project a while ago for my Media Studies assignment. I was told that we could use any music we wanted, but just had to give credit to the artists at the end of the piece. Wouldn't this be the same as providing a demo to a production company? -->>>

Doing a short for a school project is WAY different than offering a work which will represent you to a professional company. Whereas you probably wouldn't get in any legal trouble for doing it, it is very, very unprofessional to use someone else's work without permission.

Gary summed it up nicely already.

[Chris Taylor]

First please folks stop using the words theft and steal.

There can be no theft or stealing since its not possible to deprive an artists of real property via "copying" something. they still retain the original real property (this is LITERALLY the same thing as me walking by your house seeing an apple hang from the tree. if I TAKE the apple I "stole" it. if I scan it and replicate the apple later with my own matter and energy I "COPIED" it you still have your apple)

this is why its called copy right infringement. NOT copy right theft.

this does not make infringement "OK" or "right" but it also does NOT justify the much "worse" offense moniker of Theft or Stolen.

the Labels LOVE trying to brain wash people into calling it "theft"

Second

The court did NOT hold that there is an, "it's only for my family" exception to copyright infringement," nor is there any such exception. The court did NOT hold that there is an, "it's okay if it's non-commercial" copying exception to copyright infringement, nor is there any such exception.

this is not entirely correct.

Reference the home recording act

later court ruling have also applied much of this to "video" as well IIRC.

Fair Use is pretty broad especially if the "point" of the recording is not the "work in question"

so if you make a home video and the radio happens to be playing in the background as long as its not obvious that you INTENTIONALLY put the radio on (or a cd pretending to be radio) as accompaniment music for your video YOUR COVERED under fair use.

so when I post my video of me off roading my minivan to youtube the fact that 107.3 is playing in the background for some of this video is irrelevant to copyright.

the labels TRY to claim otherwise. so far the courts have upheld fair use in all challenges instances like this.

Also profit is a HUGE part of fair use.

oddly enough fair use does not mean you can't make a profit (new media for example reporting etc..)

but it IS primary. what people seem to misunderstand is that both potential profit YOU can make "AND" potential profit THEY can LOSE is what counts.

when you post a home video that happens to have music in the background not intentionally put their as a soundtrack YOUR profit is irrelevant AND there is no reasonable expectation that THEY (the labels) will lose profit as a result.

but when you upload an MP3 (the same song from your home video) or INTENTIONALLY add a sound track to your video. THAT IS a valid concern for lost profits. even if you are making nothing THEY are losing valid profit potential.

but YOU TOO can make profit and still be covered by fair use.

the issue comes down to. are you making profit BECAUSE of the song (not fair use) or BECAUSE of your reporting or review or satire etc..? (fair use)

Stewart.

if your media project was for school (educational) then you are 100% unquestionably covered by Fair Use and CAN NOT get into lawful trouble over that. Educational usage is EXPLICITLY covered under the fair use law in the USA. you do NOT need permission you DO need to give credit though (though I do not think your legally required its the right thing to do I have not read the law in a while)

if its for a demo reel THEN YES you need permission.

Personal Use is a valid copyright claim. its almost impossible to defeat (which is why NO ONE has been sued for "downloading" music) what they get sued for is SHARING the music they download back (which is part of file sharing)

Remember the lady still fighting up north? for the 24 songs she downloaded? the offense was "making available" since they were in her "shared" folder. even though they can not prove she ACTUALLY uploaded them. (which I find hilarious since should I not also be sued if I leave a CD on my desk at work since its "made available" now ?)

[Mark Williams]

I had an interesting experience the other day. A new client was interested in purchasing several nature videos I had done for practice and posted on vimeo. These videos were set to a music score which he liked that I had purchased the appropriate license for (non-commercial use). The music would only have cost about $59 - $80 per video for a commercial music license but he declined based on the additional cost. He bought the video minus an audio track which really didn't make any sense as it will have to be re-synced to a new music score. He continued to press the point that I had used the music for a token license fee and why couldn't he. Oh well....there seems to be a mentality out there that music use is free....

[Steve House]

Chris and Mark - you two DO realize that you are responding in a thread where the most recent message before the two you posted was dated in 2003, 9 years ago?

so when I post my video of me off roading my minivan to youtube the fact that 107.3 is playing in the background for some of this video is irrelevant to copyright.

As soon as you post your video on a venue such as YouTube you have published it publicly and any provisions that may have applied because it was made for your own private personal use (what you're calling "home use") are effectively nullified - the video is no longer being used exclusively for your private personal use. Whether you have published it in hopes of making a profit or not is completely irrelevant.

What you are referring to in the example of music in the background to your off-roading video is called "incidental use" and cases have gone both ways, so relying on that instead of clearing a license for any recognizable music is a real roll of the dice, especially if you're going to use the video commercially such as selling it to a client or submit it for broadcast.

Also look up "Fair Use Doctrine" - it's actually nowhere near as broad and as vague as you suggest. The law provides a very limited number of specific uses (copying for purposes of classroom instruction in grades K-12, for example) where Fair Use may be raised as a defense against a charge of infringement but "home use" is not one of them. It's true the courts have held that copying for your own private personal use is permissible but that comes from case law and is NOT part of the Fair Use Doctrine defined in the Copyright Act.

[Mark Williams]

When I purchased the non-commercial license it stated in the license description that it "could" be used on youtube.

[Paul R Johnson]

The thing nobody mentioned is that tv broadcasts have already cleared the rights on the content. So if you time-shift, the rights are covered. Using here comes the son in your own video isn't cleared - if you clear it for broadcast, then people watching it via time-shift are fine.