licensed music

[Kyle S]

Peter,

I’ve read all of your post here and you are in a word, WRONG. The music is not yours don’t use it. Carted of to jail for it no, sued a judgment placed on which might ruin you, that is absolutely possible.

Sarcasm and parody usually exsist in some degree together, and parody has always been more protected than not, hence the final ruling.

Stop nitpicking words just because you know your wrong. If you wish to use copyrighted music you do not have clearance for feel free. Don’t suggest to others that it is ok.

Once again I will say that it is absurd for someone who makes a living creating things to suggest in any way that it is ok to co-opt someone elses creations for their own purpose and profit. You create a mice animated open for your weddings, someone I know has you do their wedding and I buy a copy, Its now on my disc so I can just freely use it in my productions. Fair use, right?

Kyle

[Doug Lewis]

I too, wish that we had some sort of licensing, like Australia. How exactly does the license work in Australia? I would be happy to pay an annual license fee to allow me to legally produce what my customer wants. How can we get this done?

[Peter Ralph]

the “wedding video is a crime no matter what you do” attitude is a real problem. It encourages rampant disregard of copyright laws.

the wedding industry needs its own “Best practices in Fair Use”:

https://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse.html

[Kyle S]

Peter,

I am trying to read youar post and it is just making no sense to me. Nothing is a “crime” or problem as long as you don’t use things that belong to other people or you do not have the rights to. Interesting that you’ve completelly avoided the question of somebody lifting your work as fair use.

Kyle

[Doug Graham]

Kyle,

I’m sorry, but in reading this exchange, I think your posts are the ones that are hard to make sense of.

Nobody has said that using someone else’s material is “fair use” in every case. Furthermore, going all the way back up the thread, Peter never said that using someone else’s copyrighted music was legal. (Although he DID say that you’re not likely to get in trouble for it, especially if you use a CD supplied by the client…which is true.) It’s not legal, but at least so far the music industry has not gone after wedding videographers for this type of use.

Let’s just drop the “fair use” issue, anyway. It does not apply to wedding videographers. Period.

The gray area that DOES apply is “incidental capture”. Let’s say you are taping a guest interview. In the background, you can hear the DJ playing music. Technically, that music on your videotape is a copyright violation. However, its capture was “incidental” to the main purpose of the video, and so no violation has occurred. Now, the situation gets a little grayer when we tape the First Dance. Is that music “incidental”, or is it an essential part of the captured material? An argument can be made either way. Most likely, it would be ruled that the situation is a violation, but of a “de minimis” nature, meaning that while a violation has occurred, essentially no harm has been done to the copyright holder.

OK…so it’s (probably) safe to continue shooting receptions. Whew! How about some music to go under that photo montage?

That’s much more clear-cut. Syncing copyrighted material to your video without permission is a no-no. If the record company finds out, and decides to sue, you will most likely lose your business. SO FAR, the record companies have turned a blind eye to our industry, but a lot of us still feel uncomfortable in using copyrighted material. Some just shrug and take their chances. Some make a “good faith” effort, by buying (or having the client buy) the CDs, then destroying the disks once the video is done. This at least provides some compensation to the copyright holder, even though it is not a legally-approved procedure. Some use buyout music.

Until someone comes up with a workable licensing system for low budget productions like ours, each of us has to make a decision based on our own morals and sense of risk.

Regards,
Doug Graham

[Peter Ralph]

Yes absolutley Doug – incidental capture is the key:

“In ‘5 Girls’, Maria Finitzo filmed a teen party where an En Vogue song played in the background. She employed fair use because the girls chose for themselves to use that music, and their choices were part of the reality of their daily lives.”

https://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/category3.htm

They claim a far wider umbrella for “incidental capture” than any court has ever explicitly granted. But this is just an opinion, however many attorneys, law professors and professional organizations may have signed on to it.

[Kyle S]

Doug,

I don’t believe anything I said should be unclear. I specifically said if it is not yours or you do not own the proper rights, then you should not be using it.
This thread did not start asking about incidental taping, it started about building montages which would need sync rights. Picking up the cd from the client on a wink and a nod is not going to protect you if anything ever comes down. Sure at the moment no own has gone after weddings, once upon a time no one went after individual downloaders, once no one went after tv stations who were claiming they were covered by bmi and ascap. Oneday (who knows when) some wedding guy is going to get strung up by a record label.

It has been suggested in this thread (and others) that it should be fair use, yet when I ask a simple question, if I buy a video you made and take something for my own would that be fair use?, no one wants to answer. It is absurd for someone who makes their living creating things to either use or to suggest it is ok to use someone elses work.

Kyle

[Doug Graham]

We’re in agreement, then! 🙂

Regards,
Doug Graham

[Pat Kingery]

Doug I know you often recommend Douglas Spotted Eagle as a resource on copyright.In a post by DSE on VU he says that its fine to include copyright music in wedding videos as long as you record it live and don’t make it the basis of your edit. I don’t want to start another angry debate but this point seems basic information for wedding videographers. How about you doing an article for Event DV exploring this idea? I can’t think of anyone better qualified to do it.