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Getting the most from your camcorder: tips, tricks, and new products for those who want to take better videos.
Camcorders, Tech and Random Rants Blog
Getting the most from your camcorder: tips, tricks, and new products for those who want to take better videos.
Aug 3, 2008 9:00 AM
Posted by Joseph Devlin
Is Your Mashup Legal?
Posted by Joseph Devlin
Comedy Central's Colbert Report regularly asks viewers to take the  green screen challenge. The challenge starts when the show posts some footage online. For example, a few weeks ago they posted a speech by John McCain in front of a green background. Viewers were asked to create their own mashups that intermixed portions of the McCain speech with video borrowed from the Colbert show, or from popular movies, video games, cartoons - whatever source strikes your fancy. Log into YouTube and look for "Colbert green screen" and you will find a million of these mashups. These are all great fun, but are they legal? Most of you know that Viacom (the owner of the Colbert show) is currently suing YouTube for a billion dollars claiming that reproducing clips stolen from Viacom shows is not "fair use". These days you have to log into the Comedy Central website to see many of the Colbert clips that used to found on YouTube. But you can still find the mashups on YouTube. Why is this permissible? Does this mean you are free to steal scenes from the Colbert show to use in your own mashups? Is it permissible to borrow a few lines from one of today's hit songs for one of your videos? The best non-legalese coverage of this issue I have seen was just published online by the American University's Center for Social Media. Everybody reading this blog should give this document a quick read. It will take you ten minutes to get through the whole thing. Don't skip the ending where the authors provide a list of misleading myths about what is and is not permissible (e.g. If I'm not making money off it's fair use). The Supreme Court has ruled that fair use (the right to use copyrighted material without permission) keeps the adoption of copyright law from violating our First Amendment right of free speech. There are rules you must follow if you want to get away with it. For example, don't use someone else's material unless by doing so you are adding something new to the discussion. Make sure the material you are borrowing from has something to do with the point you are making. Six Legitimate Reasons For Using Someone Else's Material
Don't agree with something? Feel free to quote as much of it as is needed to argue why you are taking umbrage.
Feel free to quote music, video, photographs, animation, or text to illustrate a point you wish to discuss.
Copyrighted stuff is all around us. If you did not arrange for copyrighted material to be there when you were shooting, it is probably OK to leave it as background footage.
Original material can be used to recreate a mood you are describing in your video. (i.e. They fell in love while this song was playing.) The scene you set must transcend the meaning of the original footage.
Make sure your footage ads value or transforms the meaning of the original.
The idea here is to juxtapose portions of other works in order to draw new meaning not contained in the originals. Technorati Tags:
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