Graduation DVD

[Steve Loh]

Like someone else posted in this thread, PLEASE check out:

https://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/documentary_filmmakers_statement_of_best_practices_in_fair_use/

It’s a collective of different groups who have FINALLY put into simple English the ambiguous, and often ignored, Fair Use part of copyright law. From my understanding (I’m not a lawyer), recording a live event where the Star Spangled Banner, or any other song for that matter, like a pop Madonna song, is covered under FAIR USE, which means you may not need to license the copyright. Read up on the the link above, it describes when something is under fair use and when not.

Now this doesn’t mean someone can’t sue you, but it does tell you what side of the law you’re on. The purpose of the Center for Social Media and the other groups in that collective is to encourage documentarians to make more use of the Fair Use laws, since we have as a society become so chilled by the potential lawsuits that we’re way too conservative in any kind of use. There’s so much misunderstanding now too — the website lists and dispels many of those myths, such as “6 seconds of a song is OK, but more is not.” False. We as filmmakers have been taught that we must license EVERYTHING. Not true. When we shoot people on the street, and someone has a logo on a t-shirt, we think we have to blur it out. Not necessarily true. MTV taught us incorrectly by blurring everything — but their choice of doing it had little to do with copyright law and more to do with them not getting product placement $$ from those companies.

–Steve.