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Can I Use This In My Video?

Copyright law is complicated, and it can be difficult to determine if a certain song, image, or video can be used without obtaining the copyright holder’s permission. I’ve come across an interesting site that does a great job at simplifying the process of determining if a certain work is covered by copyright or not.

Just drag the slider to the appropriate publication date (of course, you need to know this…) and it will tell you whether permission is required and what the copyright status is. Very slick. See it here.

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I love this tool, or at least the idea of a “helper” for something as confusing as copyright issues!  However, I’m afraid it may cause as much confusion as clarity (at least it did for me). 

I’m no lawyer—so please take my advice with a grain of salt. I do work in music publishing, and I will do my best to give you my take. 

Here are a couple points:

a) Simply because no (c) notice is present, I would not jump to the conclusion that it is “public domain.” I would argue the opposite—unless the publisher/author/composer specifies that it IS public domain (or they died more than 70 years ago—see point b), intellectual property rights still apply.

b)  Typically 70 years from the death of the author is safe, however there were some war-time extensions granted in many European countries due to WWI and WWII, which extend these rights to as much as 100 years.

c)  In music, even if a work is in the public domain, (for instance, Bethovan’s 5th).  The recording of that work still belongs to someone, and a license is needed to use that recording in your production.

Hopefully that’s not too much unsolicited info   Thanks for posting such a cool tool!

Posted by craigsanatomy  on  10/08  at  03:59 PM

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