Can I Legally Sell Art Based on Images From Youtube Nature Videos?

Disclaimer: What you're well-nigh to read is a compendium on fair use and copyrights pertaining to movie and video production. I provide plenty of links and references to support the information. But information technology should not replace consulting an attorney with regard to your particular state of affairs.

What are copyrights and trademarks?

Simply put, a copyright protects literary and artistic avails such as books, movies, videos, plays songs, photographs, etc. Information technology should not be dislocated with a trademark which is a form of protection geared towards words and symbols. Trademarks are predominantly for the protection of a company's intellectual property surrounding its brands and logos.

Unless explicitly expressed, whoever creates an image (photo or video), owns the copyright to that paradigm. As long as that image does non infringe on another pre-existing copyright. That is why it is so of import for production companies to have contracts in place with both clients and subcontractors with regards to the videos or photographs they create.

What is Fair Use?

The laws and regulations around fair use and copyrights are among the about disruptive aspects of filmmaking. When can yous use a vocal, photograph, or pic prune, etc., and be within the bounds of the law? And what about all those thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo every week? How are they able to get away with what appear to be copyrights violations?

Section 107

According to the U.South. Copyright Office, Fair Use is "a legal doctrine that promotes liberty of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in sure circumstances . Section 107 of the Copyright Human action provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair utilize and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, educational activity, scholarship, and research —as examples of activities that may qualify as off-white use.  Department 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of off-white use:

1. Purpose and graphic symbol of the use. Including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. Nature of the copyrighted piece of work (using parts of something more creative in nature, like a movie or book, has a weaker "fair utilise" statement than news footage or a technical article).
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (i.eastward. do yous actually demand 3 whole minutes of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" in that video essay about superhero movies? Or volition 3 seconds do?)
4. Event of the use upon the potential marketplace for or value of the copyrighted work (will the utilise injure the original copyright holder's ability to make money from the work that was copied?).

The thing that makes off-white employ so difficult is that it's not a clear-cut law. It's relatively open up to interpretation. Unless you're actually sued or challenged, yous may never know 100% whether your use adheres to the constabulary or non. In court, it's the ruling estimate's discretion based on his or her own interpretation of the law.

Transformative Work

These four factors boil downwardly into two of import questions:

First, are you repurposing the material for utilise in a way other than its original purpose? That is what it means for a  work to be transformative. This is a common term y'all will hear in discussions of off-white use. A classic example would be the use of a movie clip within an educational context. A clip from Saving Private Ryan's opening scene in a video essay on how Spielberg uses cinema verité is transformative. You're taking the original media (a piece of entertainment) and using it for instruction.

"Saving Private Ryan". © DreamWorks/Paramount

Is it fair?

However, if yous took those aforementioned clips and dropped them into your WWII brusque film for the express purpose of being a boxing scene, well, in the words of Andrew Garfield to Jesse Eisenberg's inThe Social Network, "Lawyer upwards!"

The second question to ask is, "If your utilise is transformative, are you using the advisable amount for that transformative purpose?" Usually, this amount is a pocket-size percent of the whole. In the above case of using clips from Saving Private Ryan, you lot could probably justify as much as 30 seconds to adequately prove use of cinema verité. However, if yous uploaded the entire movie to your "education aqueduct," and y'all only had a few random vocalism-over commentaries about colour grading or cinematography, that would be a harder fair use argument to support.

The fab 4

F our uses of copyrighted material are particularly addressed and often protected by off-white utilize: commentary, criticism, education, and news. And then satires, parodies, video essays, documentaries, etc., volition usually exist protected by fair use. Still, your interpretation of "education" my not be the aforementioned as a gauge's. Lots of videos are uploaded to YouTube with a disclaimer similar "This video is uploaded for educational purposes."

But it's just the full video with no transformative aspect. (Lamentable buddy, that doesn't cut information technology.)

Retrieve, fair employ is the kind of law wherein a transgression isn't definitively determined until afterward  the fact (i.eastward. you get sued). It's not similar running a cherry light or shooting a person in common cold blood. These are acts that yous know are illegal beforehand. So invoking "fair utilize," leaves yous open to litigation if there are no expressed licenses in place. That's just a common cold difficult truth.

With that said, you don't have to be gun-shy about it. There are resources and past precedents in place wherein you lot can feel confident in your application of off-white use. We'll get to those later.

The DMCA

No word of copyrights and fair use in filmmaking would be consummate without addressing to some extent the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This was a law signed by President Bill Clinton on October 12, 1998 that implements 2 treaties by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The law is detailed and contains five titles. In brusk, and paraphrasing Wikipedia speak, "Information technology criminalizes product and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent digital rights management (DRM)."

These are the technologies used to access copyrighted digital media such as calculator programs, movies, etc.  A central attribute is this. DMCA is the limitation of liability for internet companies with regards to copyrighted works distributed on the internet. In other words, sites similar YouTube and Vimeo aren't liable for violations by people who use their services. As long as they reply immediately to copyright holders' requests for action confronting violators. We'll accost this later as well.

Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices

I've studied and written about the topic of fair use a number of times in the past. A yr ago I had the opportunity to interview Patricia ("Pat") Aufderheide, one of the co-founders for the Center for Media and Social Impact. This is a non-profit organization, based in Washington D.C. It fights for universal copyright and fair use standards for films, videos, photographs, and even podcasts and radio.

My interview was office two of a 2-part podcast series on Off-white Use in Filmmaking. (You lot can hear my full interview with her hither). CMSI has worked with legal scholars and media professionals to create a series of PDFs. These aim to standardize fair usage and provide a centralized resource for media makers. One of the documents is The Documentary Filmmakers' Argument of All-time Practices in Fair Utilize. Pat specifically worked with 1 of the world's most renowned experts on off-white use, Peter Jaszi, to put this document together.

Driving forcefulness

The chief impetus for Pat and Peter creating this document (and leading the research to create it) was their discovery of the number of documentary filmmakers who were avoiding the usage of material they believed would put them at risk. Some recurring refrains from documentary filmmakers included: don't embrace any topics related to popular music; don't cover whatever politics that would crave yous to apply news footage; don't cover anything related to popular culture; etc.

All of these topics would require huge clearance budgets, some even greater than the budgets of the entire films themselves. Every bit Pat puts it, "Filmmakers aren't waiting for people to censor them. They're just going alee and doing it to themselves."

Based on these findings, Pat and Peter got funding from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations. This was used to fund the extended enquiry and creation of the argument of best practices.

The dazzler of the argument of best practices is that it was created in conjunction with working feature film documentary filmmakers and the world'southward leading legal scholars, to define, in simple words, what kinds of uses of copyright works fall under fair utilize. I used and referenced it in the making of my brusque film documentary "Mixed in America: Little Mixed Sunshine."

I even had Pat scout the short to go her take on it. The prologue, in particular, contains a number of clips from music videos, onetime movies, and gimmicky movies. Aslope the credits for the clips used, I also reference the Fair Apply statement. So technically, could Disney or HBO come afterward me? Yes. But I followed the guidelines and went the extra mile to credit the clips used. So, I'm not losing whatsoever sleep over the "Mouse House" giving me a call.

The Big Five Filmmaking Scenarios

Now I want to address the top five areas where filmmakers meet trouble when using other people'south copyrights. This is based on my discussion with Pat and boosted research. I'll be using a combination of case studies where copyright violators went afoul of the respective copyright holders. And cases where the off-white apply appears to exist categorically intact.

We're also planning to produce some more than articles on the business side of filmmaking.

Trademarks and logos

You know how some reality TV shows blur out the logos on apparel? I used to think that was because the reality show didn't want to give gratuitous advertising to the brand. Only that is not the instance. Information technology turns out that information technology'due south because of copyrights.

The beginning part of my same podcast 2-part interview was with New York documentary filmmaker Salima Koroma. I was interviewing her for something completely different, and I asked her how her morning was going. (You know, regular pre-interview chit chat.) She said it was hectic because she was meeting with her lawyers to go over all the clearances she had to go back and become for her documentary "Bad Rap." Clearances she had no idea were needed. This pre-interview "pocket-sized talk" led into a fifteen+ minute conversation that became its own split up episode.

For example, at that place's a shot of Times Square in her motion-picture show. In the background are all of these logos, musical posters, billboards, etc. According to Salima'due south attorneys, they ALL needed clearances.

Paradigm © Chensiyuan (CC By-SA)

This seemed crazy to me. If anything seemed to fit under fair employ, a 2-second shot of "The Lion Male monarch" billboard in the groundwork of  a documentary seemed it.  Non only was it cursory, but information technology was besides incidental. These types of occurrence helped to inspire the work behind the CMSI-created document of all-time practices. Salima's attorney's response was that it's better to be rubber than sorry and get the clearances. Fifty-fifty if something technically fits nether "fair employ."

Images

In 2011 I participated in The 48 Hour Film Project. To this solar day information technology remains the virtually challenging and one of the most rewarding filmmaking experiences of my life. One of the rules of the festival was making certain yous had clearances for any copyrighted material in your film. Including paintings and photographs.

"But Ron, didn't you allude to the fact that incidental appearances of copyrights or trademarks might exist okay?" That is truthful. Just 1) these weren't documentaries nosotros're making, they were narrative pieces of fiction. And 2) the 48HFP distributes the winning films online and internationally. And so they're covering themselves. And in case you're wondering, no, my movie didn't win. We missed the deadline by xxx minutes because needed to re-export the project.

Stock photos and footage

But it's just not the use of photographs or paintings equally incidental appearances you need to be mindful of. If yous're using them in the video (i.e. y'all're dropping the image on your NLE timeline), y'all demand to make certain you have clearances. There are many resources for legally licensing stock photos and footage (eastward.k. Pond5, Getty Images, Video Blocks, and Shutterstock, to name a few).

There are besides plenty of resources to obtain gratuitous stock imagery. Sites similar Unsplash and StockSnap take utilized Creative Eatables Zero licenses. This is the well-nigh permissive of the creative commons licenses (see below for the full clarification of Creative Eatables). It's essentially just one "notch" below the public domain. A CC0 license allows y'all to use the copyrighted work whatsoever fashion you want. Without the demand to even credit the copyright holder. I've often used Pixabay to discover costless stock video footage. (Proceed in heed, you become what you pay for.)

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash (even though nosotros are not required to credit photographers when using images from sites similar Unsplash, we like to give props when possible).

Movie and television clips

Equally I mentioned above, I used clips from various movies and Television set shows for my curt film documentary. Perhaps the most common area where you might see this example of fair employ is in video essays. Essayists like Tony Zhou ("Every Frame a Painting") and Evan Puschak ("Nerdwriter") garner millions of views from their respective video essays. And they all include movie clips, photographs, television clips, and in some cases, fifty-fifty music.

Yet, YouTube has not invoked DMCA rules to have their videos downward. And, on top of that, these guys are making thousands of dollars per video (equally of this writing, Tony's Patreon campaign for "Every Frame a Painting" yields over $seven,700 per video).

I of the tests for fair use adherence is whether the copyrighted material is used for commercial gain. It's clear hither that these guys have a commercial do good from their use. Evan not only makes a few thousand dollars per video from his Patreon, but he likewise gets corporate sponsorship from companies similar Squarespace.

In essence

Merely video essays are the quintessential example of off-white use in terms of both education and critical commentary. That is the essence of a video essay. Based on the transformative use, the corporeality of the copyrighted material used, and the fact that this use is not hurting the commercial viability of the copyright holders, they're protected.

At present, I cannot say for 100% certain those guys don't actually have licenses with all parties whose copyrighted works are beingness used. But, I'one thousand going to go out on a limb and say that a guy from Philly making videos in his living room and earning $3,000 per video has not paid licensing fees to a dozen or so unlike conglomerates.

I have some other perfect example of this usage where I do know for sure the filmmaker did not accept license or permission.

Kirby Ferguson is the filmmaker behind "Everything'southward a Remix."

This short film serial has garnered millions of views and Kirby has even spoken on the TED stage. Back in 2010 I interviewed him for i of my older podcasts, and I afterwards contacted him well-nigh his utilise of Tarantino film clips, also as music usage (where he used parts of famous songs to illustrate, coincidentally, how musicians sample songs). Kirby told me he did non get permission from the studios or labels to apply those clips.

Yous know what he did practice? He followed the guidelines of the CMSI's The Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. In fact, he was the offset person to ever refer me to the piece of work of Pat and the CMSI.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Holding (or "IP") is a physically intangible item of value based on ideas, computer lawmaking, trademarks, copyrighted stories and characters, etc. For many companies, their IP is their primary production. And so, it stands to reason, they get out of their way to protect that IP.

But filmmakers are nerds. (You're reading an article past a huge one. A nerd that is). And we beloved our sci-fi and fantasy. Hence the fan film.

Fan service

YouTube contains tens of thousands of fan films. Media created by fans of a piece of IP wherein they apply that IP to make their own films. (Some accept jokingly argued that this season of "Game of Thrones" is a glorified "fan film" vs. an adaptation because George R.R. Martin hasn't finished the terminal two books in his famous Song of Water ice and Fire series upon which the HBO series is based. Simply, again, don't go me started.)

Based on my agreement of fair apply and copyright law, but about every unmarried instance of a fan film is a copyright violation. They are non necessarily making money from these films; but for the most office, the films are not making any kind of commentary or critique on the IP. They are not transformative in purpose either (i.e. instruction). They are entertainment for entertainment'south sake, just like the original IP.

Now, some IP holders encourage fan films and allow a vibrant fan film community to flourish. Fan films go on the culture alive and fans excited near the traditional IP. Lucasfilm is a perfect example of that in how they've responded to and embraced the "Star Wars" fan film community. (1 of the about celebrated "Star Wars" fan films recently was concluding twelvemonth's "Darth Maul – Apprentice" with over 14 million views every bit of this writing.)

However, some IP holders of sci-fi space stories are not equally forgiving.

The Boxing of Axanar

Earlier this yr, subsequently a legal boxing that lasted nearly a twelvemonth, Paramount Pictures and CBS (the owners of "Star Expedition") won a judgment confronting Axanar Productions. Axanar had raised over $1 meg in crowdfunding to produce a feature-length version of information technology's popular brusk movie "Prelude to Axanar." Axanar claimed fair use. A U.S.  district courtroom approximate said no.

Axanar and CBS/Paramount eventually reached a settlement whereby Axanar agreed to substantially change the length and content of their moving-picture show (which naturally put them in a bit of a bind as they raised over a million dollars to make a characteristic).

What fabricated this case particularly stand out was the fact that there accept been "Star Expedition" fan films literally for decades. Dating dorsum as early as the 80s. Fifty-fifty Axanar's original pic "Prelude to Axanar" was made with no objection from CBS/Paramount and as of this writing has over three million views.

Don't get them started

What set the studio off, in this example, was the scope of this new project. In addition to the feature-length and the $one one thousand thousand+ budget, it stars well-known actors like Richard Hatch (Apollo from the original "Battlestar Galactica" and Tom Sarek in the SyFy Channel remake), Gary Graham, and Kate Vernon (also from SyFy's "BSG"). In the optics of CBS/Paramount, the feature-length fan motion picture with those production values and bandage, was too much. (specially with the new "Star Trek:  Discovery" series on the horizon).

Richard Hatch (who sadly passed abroad this by February) played a Klingon commander in the Axanar series.

The uproar from the fans was huge. Needless to say, they were pissed. The fan community is what kept "Star Trek" alive, going as far back every bit the 70s. So many saw this lawsuit as an barb on the fan loyalty and devotion to the franchise.

In an try to support the fan film customs and encourage the connected production of fam films, CBS/Paramount created a set of guidelines for future fan film productions. They put limits on things like the amount of coin raised (must be less than $l,000), the running time (less than fifteen minutes), and that films must star and be produced by amateurs. Many feel that those guidelines are also limiting. Only time will tell how information technology all plays out.

The Wrath of Kahn

Joseph Kahn is one of the most prolific music video filmmakers on the planet. He is the get-to guy for Taylor Swift. He'south insanely talented and has the attitude to match.

About 2.5 years ago, he and producer Adi Shankar released what some have described every bit the virtually epic Power Rangers picture show ever made. Based on the popular children's serial owned past Saban Entertainment, Kahn and Shankar's version is night, gritty, and absolutely NOT FOR KIDS. This is due to sexual practice, graphic violence, drug utilise, linguistic communication, dark themes—pretty much everything you tin put in a film that makes it NSFW.

Recognizable talent

The product values are meridian-notch, from the CGI to the choreography; and even the acting is very good. It too stars well-known actors, namely Katee Sackhoff (yet another SyFy BSG alum), and "Dawson" from the WB hit "Dawson'southward Creek", James Van Der Beek.

A quick response

It did non have long for the short to get viral. Saban, who at the fourth dimension was in pre-production for a new Ability Rangers film (released last yr), ordered to have the video removed from Vimeo. Kahn was pissed.

Recollect the DMCA I mentioned above? This is where information technology came into action. Under the regulations of the DMCA, Vimeo was required past law to remove it at the behest of Saban. And they retorted as such to Kahn on Twitter.

They released a formal statement on their blog where they said:

"The video creator feels that the video is covered past Fair Use based on the fact that information technology is non-commercial and satirical. We concur that an statement for fair use can exist made, but the DMCA police force does not give content hosts (like Vimeo) permission to condone a takedown find but because of the presence of ane or more fair use factors. This is a legal thing between the copyright holder and the video creator."

Making a example

Kahn and Shankar were making the case that this video falls under Fair Apply considering they were not making any coin from it, and they saw information technology as a satirical commentary on kids and violence. IMHO, I called B.S. on both, and I think Saban had a stiff case against Kahn regarding this film.

• Kahn may not take been paid for the film, but you lot don't have to exist a Harvard concern graduate to know that a film like this, and the publicity it was getting, will be worth more to him long-term than any manager fee he would've earned. Filmmakers make these kinds of films all the time precisely for the marketing value they bring. All an attorney has to do is add up the press impressions Kahn had gotten on sites like Mashable, i09, HitFlix, and pretty much every major tech, sci-fi and picture show website and calculate what ads on those sites would cost to come up upwardly with a figure.
• Information technology's obviously not an educational or "news" item.
• Lastly, I don't recollect this kind of film really qualifies equally a "commentary" on Power Rangers, or even a parody. It is a serious drama using the characters from the universe. In Kahn's ain words, he made it because he wanted to meet a "practiced" Power Rangers flick; not as a critique or commentary. Shankar released a video which gives his reasons why he made it. Only the comedic nature of this video clearly shows there was no sincere want to make a serious commentary about children and violence. At the end of the day, they wanted to make a kick-ass Ability Rangers motion picture. And without a incertitude, they did.

Split decision

I loved that Power Rangers "fan film." It was truly a curiosity. But information technology actually wasn't fair use. Equally fan fiction, few reach the level of sophistication of the Kahn film. Only if that fiction goes against the brand of the art in question, the copyright holder should have the correct to have it removed, no affair how abrasive or frustrating information technology might exist fifty-fifty to the very fans for which it was fabricated. IMHO, we every bit artists should actually be defending that right, non fighting against it (as many people did when Vimeo starting time took information technology down).

Ultimately Saban and Shankar/Kahn reached an agreement to reinstate the film if a disclaimer was added. I actually retrieve that's was pretty generous on the side of Saban. (And based on the dismal operation of their official Power Rangers moving-picture show, they may want to look into Kahn doing a feature-length version of his fan movie. I that is more kid-friendly, of course).

Music

The last of the large five areas of fair use scenarios for filmmakers I want to embrace is music. Oh boy. This will be fun.

No area of confusion on this event is perhaps more misunderstood than music. You demand wait no further than the hundreds (if not thousands) of professionally shot wedding videos edited with copyrighted music. Or the countless epic curt films on YouTube with Hans Zimmer or Michael Giacchino "scores." Many novice filmmakers presume that if a video is "not for commercial purposes" and/or if the music was purchased on iTunes, then that clears them or their conscience. Unfortunately, it doesn't (well, it may clear their censor, but it definitely doesn't articulate them legally).

Within parameters

Music does indeed fall under off-white use, and and then your apply of it must also fit within the parameters mentioned above. The trouble is, most of the use of music in such film and video is a copyright violation. They employ someone else's music, unlicensed, in the manner for which it was originally purposed. At that place is no transformative apply or commentary on the music itself.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

In social club to legally apply music in your motion-picture show or video, you need ii types of licenses: a master (besides known as mechanical) use license (controlled by the record label) and a synchronization (or sync) license (controlled by the publisher). The mechanical employ license gives you rights to the song from the originator; the sync license gives you lot the right to the specific version of the song and set up it to a film or video. In many cases, the aforementioned company represents the publisher and the label. But if they don't, you'd take to arrange for licenses with each entity separately.

Years ago, The Harry Trick Bureau was a centralized resource for getting all the appropriate licenses for utilise in films. They accept since given up managing sync licenses and focus on mechanical use licenses.

Raising the stakes

Within the past 7 years, record companies accept raised the stakes when it comes to illegally using their music. Ii wedding videographers I know personally had rather high-profile public lawsuits by EMI when wedding ceremony videos they produced for celebrities went viral. As about wedding videos do, theirs had copyrighted music. Each settled out of court for amounts in the five-figure range; that's A LOT of money for a small wedding filmmaker to shell out. If you are a wedding ceremony and effect videographer, don't risk it. Fortunately, there are alternatives to using music illegally.

Music License Alternatives

Unless y'all have a huge upkeep, you will non exist able to get popular music for that really cool curt picture or feature moving-picture show. Thankfully, there is  a growing number of sites where yous can legally license music from a wide diverseness genres. Some of these sites fifty-fifty have mainstream popular music.

The length and toll of the license will depend on factors such as the intended audience (hymeneals, corporate, personal), the size of the audition, and the intended distribution (theatrical, online, DVD/Blu-ray, circulate). For theatrically-released features, you volition typically demand to arrange some sort of custom license (which undoubtedly will cost you an arm and a leg).

Royalty-gratuitous? Or rights-managed?

The about important affair to proceed in mind is that some of these sites have royalty-free licenses, and others have what's called "rights-managed" licenses.

• Royalty-free is substantially "buy once, utilize indefinitely." You can utilize royalty-free songs in just well-nigh all manners of production, for as many productions, for as long as you like. A few of the most popular royalty free sites I'm familiar with include Pond5, PremiumBeat, and AudioJungle. You'll detect that the rates on these sites can be as little as $12 to $twoscore.
• Rights Managed licenses are more restrictive. They are typically for one song and ane production. Whereas royalty-free sites have one price per vocal, rights-managed sites will change the price based on the license. The same song my price $sixty for utilize in a hymeneals video, only $500 if used in a local cable Television receiver commercial, or a corporate promo video for a company with l or more employees. The rights managed sites I come across more frequently are Marmoset Music, Song Freedom (at present FyrFly), MusicBed, and Triple Scoop Music.

Every bit an avid podcaster who pretty much does it as a passion project, I don't take the budget to license music for the episodes I produce. So I've turned to a resource that is not only smashing for music but applicable to all forms of copyrights: creative commons.

Creative Eatables

Artistic Commons is an system dedicated to providing worldwide licensing for copyright holders who want the ability to freely and easily license their work to others. When you utilise a copyrighted work under Artistic Commons, you concur to i of half-dozen types of licenses.

Artistic Eatables licenses

• Attribution (CC By):  This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the copyright holder'southward work, even commercially, as long as they requite credit for the original creation.
• Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the copyright holder's work, even for commercial purposes, equally long as they give credit and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works will deport the aforementioned license, then any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used past Wikipedia and is recommended for materials that would do good from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
• Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND): This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, equally long equally it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the copyright holder.
• Attribution-NonCommercial (CC By-NC): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the copyright holder's work not-commercially, and although their new works must too acknowledge the copyright holder and exist non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the copyright holder'southward work non-commercially, every bit long as they requite credit and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND): This license is the well-nigh restrictive, only assuasive others to download the copyright holder's works and share them with others as long as they requite credit. They can't change them in whatsoever way or use them commercially.

Every bit I mentioned earlier, I employ CC music in my podcasts, merely I also used it in my documentary short.

Creative Commons does extremely important work. It allows content creators to share and use copyrighted fabric in a way that is fair and equitable to both the copyright holders and the users of those copyrights. You can learn more nigh them at CreativeCommons.org.

C.Y.A.

As a filmmaker (documentary or otherwise) who wants to use other people'south copyrights in your work, there are a number of things you can do to protect yourself:

• Employ the Statement of Best Practices: When CMSI did a study ii years ago of documentary films over the previous ten years that had implemented the guidelines of off-white use outlined in this document, they constitute the overwhelming majority of them had no problems with broadcasters, insurers, or lawyers.
• Where budgets permit, go ahead and get the clearance. You may call up my contempo interview with the editors of HBO'south documentary series "The Defiant Ones", about the careers of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. The music licensing budget for that 4-role serial was the highest in HBO'due south history.
• CC Yourself: when looking for music, photos, or even stock footage for your video needs, if yous don't accept the budget, commencement with Artistic Eatables sites. Yous can even showtime your search direct from the CC Search Engine.

I've tried to give you an exhaustive listing of resources and case studies related to fair use and copyright usage and then that moving forward, y'all tin make informed decisions. Only I'm sure there are other resources I may have missed. What are some of your favorite sites for finding and using copyrighted material legally in productions? Please share.

[Header image Photo past Claire Anderson on Unsplash]

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Source: https://blog.frame.io/2017/08/30/copyrights-and-fair-use-for-filmmakers/