From Icommons comes an incredibly useful legal brief to remixing media in the age of participatory media and campaigns by Steve Vosloo, Digital Hero Book Project. What's even better, you don't need a law degree to understand it!
The post answers the questions:
- How do you negotiate the potential minefield of legalese surrounding your content?
- How can you be creative and stay legal?
- And how do you protect your own digital creations when you put them out there for the benefit of millions of screaming fans?
There are some issues related to the remix chain and what is or isn't fair use. But one scenario, well I had that very question in a video I just published:
I create a short movie, comprised of a video clip and three digital photos that I took, my -over and a royalty-free soundtrack song, which I bought from Premium Beat. How do I communicate my content’s licensing and that of the sound bite? Must I always create credits for the movie, shown at the end?
When deciding where to indicate licensing information, it is again a case of “more is better”. CC takes a three-pronged approach to this:1) Include credit information in the media itself, for example credits shown at the end of a video or, as in the case of Magnatune, a “shout-out” at the end of their try-before-you-buy audio tracks referring listeners to Magnatune;
2) Include credit information on the website or other source from where the content is being downloaded, for example, on the page for American Bach Soloists Favorite Cantatas album on Magnatune there is a clear link to license information for that album. If you upload your images to Flickr, the license information is displayed on the photo page;
3) Embed the license information directly into the file. Currently this is only possible with MP3 audio files through embedding of metadata into the file itself. The CC developers have promised this functionality in additional formats – images, video, etc. – in the future.
In the example of the movie you created, what you need to say regarding the bought song all depends on the licensing terms of use for the third-party from where you bought the content. Sorry folks, but you have to read those terms and act appropriately! In the case of Premium Beat, they retain ownership of the file, even though you buy a worldwide “non-exclusive” license to play the song. You can’t sell the song, though. Based on the terms, the credit for this video should include the song information as follows: “‘Sounds of Samba’. Some rights reserved, PremiumBeat.com.”
Excellent, practical - thanks for sharing.
Fang
Posted by: mike seyfang | March 07, 2007 at 06:06 PM