If I put a piece of commercial music on a Wam film that I make available for free (and to the relatively small Wam community, if that makes any difference) am I in breach of the law, or is it ok if I'm not doing it for commercial gain? Does anyone know the rules? I'm pretty sure I've seen other producers do this but could use any advice you can offer.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that it's illegal to make any copyright work (which basically means anything first published in any medium in the last 70 years at least, varies by country) available to others without the copyright holder's permission.

All the people the music biz sued for file sharing weren't getting anything in return, so the commercial gain thing doesn't seem to matter.

This is why most of our videos at the Hall are silent, we always have loud music playing on CD (chosen by the models) when we shoot, but it'd be illegal to leave it on the finished video, so we delete the audio track completely during production.

 

DungeonMasterOne is correct. The copyright owner must give permission for his work to be used in anything that might be redistributed. This makes sense for at least 2 reasons. The first is the one already stated by DungeonMasterOne; you're redistributing the artist's work. The second one is that the artist may or may not want his work associated with your work, or you might be reproducing a low quality version of his work, etc. The original artist has a right to protect the integrity of his/her work.

If you really feel what you are doing is harmless, the answer is very simple. You simply contact the copyright owner and get written permission. There's a slim chance you'll get a large record company to give you permission, but smaller artists might simply ask for a credit, in that you may be promoting their work.

The rules with the original copyright laws were fairly common sense. They get complicated in the gray areas and really convoluted when you start studying case law. There are some areas where it's pretty black and white, though. For example, I can't license a recording for personal use and then put it on YouTube for the whole world to enjoy. Note, that when you "buy" a song, you are not really purchasing that song, but rather entering into an agreement with the artist that grants you the right to listen to that song with restrictions. i.e. You can't just play the song in your restaurant to entertain your patrons, unless you pay performance royalties. That's where it starts to get complex, but posting it a website is definitely out! ;)

Since the original copyright law, the law has been revised and the DMCA has been enacted. Things aren't as simple as they used to be, but you may assume that the changes made the law more restrictive and the penalties for breach more severe, rather than less. DMCA did a lot to handicap "fair use". At one time, if you purchased a VHS movie and later decided you'd like to have that movie on DVD, you could have copied it to DVD for your own personal use. Now, that would require circumventing built in copyright protection, which would make that act illegal. Personally, I am going to do whatever I want within the walls of my own home, but once you start advertising your disregard for intellectual property laws on the Internet, you're opening yourself up to some nasty litigation.

In a nutshell, I'm with DungeonMasterOne. Don't use anything in your videos that belongs to someone else unless you've got written permission. I have a talented musician and composer who works with me when I need a music bed for a documentary or something. Otherwise, I make simple riffs in GarageBand, or simply avoid any music. It's also a good idea to watch for copyrighted images, TV broadcasts, etc. that might appear in your videos.

It sucks, but the penalties can be severe if you get busted. Just take the high road whenever possible.

 

Thanks very much for taking the time to post these comprehensive replies, guys. I appreciate it.

The easiest way around the copyright issue is to buy some "Royalty Free" music. I purchased a set from Ebay some time ago and there are hundreds of different tracks that even include various versions of the track in different formats, ie a 10 second intro ,15 , 30 45 seconds etc through to the full track ie 2 to 5 minutes depending. I've found this useful for many projects, including our GTB films.

 

Yep, and if you fancy an all expenses paid trip to the U.S, use an American artist and have your material hosted on a server in the U.S. The U.S is currently flexing it's treaty agreements to make sure we and New Zealand are still its bitches.

 

You can also find a huge amount of royalty free music out there as well as huge amounts of royalty free archive footage. I found some 1950's bondage and lesbian films that was also royalty free to do with what you wanted. And just for a laugh why not check out the royalty free gem that is "Beware of gays" because could someone please redub it or mangle it somehow to show how ignorant some people used to be, although in all honesty it is actually quite funny

 

I had a thought...
there are two kinds of copyright one essentially cover the interlectual property IE the actually song itself and the other which is often reffered to as a mechanical copyright refers to actual recording itself so lets say you want to use a recording by radiohead of a track writen by elton jonn then you would need both the permision of the copyright holder for the recording and the copyright holder for the song. However you may or may not be aware that the intelectual property copyright runs out after rougly 70 years (Which is why Cliff is getting all panicky about it, lol) So if you for instance could get the manuscript for a piece of work that is out of copyright and you then made your own recording of it somehow you could use that in your clips with no issue at all. Almost all clasical stuff is out of copyright and can be used that way.


Hope this helps
Cheers, Jonn