Copyright and profit.

DaftChris

Some friends and I just made a YouTube channel; which will contain both parodies and our original material. We set it up to be monetized, meaning getting a small amount of money per x amount of views.

Something crossed my mind: one of the videos is an abridged movie. Meaning copyrighted footage. If we were just to upload the actual movie and make money on it, we could get in some serious legal trouble. However, it is a parody; we re-edited the film to make it comedic and made it into something our own.

On blip, there are things like this, as well as movie reviews, music parodies, etc., which people upload for profit. There are also sites like That Guy With The Glasses which are hosted from blip which make a profit.

On YouTube there are people who do parodies and reviews and make money. Some which come to mind are Shane Dawson, Barely Political, PewDiePie and The Angry Video Game Nerd.

Am I worrying too much, or should I cancel the monetation account?

RebeccaS

Do you want to make parodies or re edit other people's footage? A parody is fine, using someone else's footage isn't. Hope that helps

Cinorjer

You need to research "fair use" laws. It's not just whether or not you make a profit. I can't make copies of a current best selling book and give them away, and claim it's OK because I didn't make money. Nor can I steal my neighbor's lawn furniture, give it away, and claim it's OK because I didn't make money. See the principle?

Copyright is about control. You can make a complete new work of art that is a parady of an existing one (think Weird Al Yankovich) or post brief shatches of an existing work to go along with comment and criticism (news and websites). But if you take an existing work, cut and paste it and such and use it to create your own work, then the owners of the work will complain to youtube and it will be taken down, if they care. Some of the copyright owners are smart enough to know it's publicity. Look at all the tributes to pop songs on youtube.

So just don't get angry if the owner objects. They have the right.

RebeccaS

I might be wrong about this, but I think fair use only applies if the material is going to be used for educational purposes (this includes criticism).

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

The easiest way to deal with it is to just ask permission from the original owner in writing.

Beej

Can we have the YouTube channel name? I'd love to judge it wih all of my being. If it isn't any good, you won't have the problem that you are asking about. But I hope it's good. Either way. train wrecks have their appeal too. Really good or really bad. That's how stuff gets it's views on the internet. Averageness is totally forgotten.

:vimp: < is this icon a pimp? I just noticed it.

DaftChris

@RebeccaS

Thanks for the input.

There are cases in which parody, whether for education or profit, is protected. The hip hop group 2 live Crew made a parody of the song "Oh, Pretty Woman" and they were sued by the original songs owners. However they won because, despite making their parody for profit, they were protected under fair use. There also countless unofficial "lyric" videos made by random people who don't hold the songs copyright; yet there are ads on their videos...meaning that the video is monetized. They don't even add anything or re-edit the music. It's just lyrics over copyrighted music.

When it comes to YouTube, they check the videos to see if they can be monetized. If this video CAN'T be monetized, we are still going to upload it, but we won't make profit from it. We'll just wait until we make our own original videos to monetize.

By the way, check this video out. Click anywhere on the image surrounding the red "play" button and it will take you to YouTube.



This person uses nothing but clips from Snow White and mostly sounds from the movie to make this song. S/He is a YouTube partner, meaning s/he makes money every time one of the videos is viewed.


@TheBeejAbides

Sure, when we upload the video in question, I'll showcase it here.

vinlyn

Interesting that you pick a Disney character. Disney corporation is, perhaps, the most strict in terms of copyright infringement of all the Hollywood companies. They even go after public schools that have shown Disney videos on field trips!

RebeccaS

But did they have permission to use the clips? Just worth asking I think.

I only know the basics of copyright (I'm a graphic designer so I need to know about copyright and trademarking etc. a little) and I don't know how it applies to video work and if there are any differences.. There are a lot of nuances and grey areas when it comes to copyright, you'd get the best answer from a lawyer or someone experienced in what it is you're doing specifically. Good luck

RebeccaS

I would also look into YouTube's vetting process for monetizing videos. If you uploaded copyrighted work to be monetized, and they allowed your account to do that, what kind of liability would YouTube have? If they have no responsibility (it should say somewhere in the terms and conditions) and you are solely liable then they're not going to spend a lot of time policing uploads.

DaftChris

@RebeccaS

A.) I don't think s/he gets the copyright.

B.) They scan everything to make sure it's permissible. They will send you an e-mail telling you what you would have to change if you still wish to make money. If a company in question complains, they take the video down immediately to avoid a lawsuit. If that happens, we will just move on and only upload our original material.

Also, an ethical question should (if not necessarily would) come into question if a company does complain. We will still comply and remove the video, but what could the company possibly gain if they did sue us? They make billions of dollars annually and we are college students who will be lucky if we ever make over $35,000 a year in our lifetimes.

RebeccaS

The best example I have of this in my industry is design "contests". People host contests via a site (they pay the site a listing fee plus any add ons - making the listing bold, keeping it at the top of the page etc.) and designers submit work to "win a prize". The site hosting the competition still makes money, but even if the designs entered are stolen, the site hosting the competition has no liability.

If the contest holder picked a "winner", started using the design and that design was actually stolen, it's the contest holder who would be held liable, not the contest site and not the designer who entered the stolen design.

People host these competitions to have things designed for them assuming that entered works are policed and that they (the contest holder) are somehow protected by the site but actually they're not. (the whole "design competition" fad is just a disaster, the copyright factor being the biggest problem of all of them for clients).

So you might think that YouTube giving you the OK means that the law is giving you the OK but that might not be the case at all.

RebeccaS

DaftChris said:

@RebeccaS

A.) I don't think s/he gets the copyright.

B.) They scan everything to make sure it's permissible. They will send you an e-mail telling you what you would have to change if you still wish to make money. If a company in question complains, they take the video down immediately to avoid a lawsuit. If that happens, we will just move on and only upload our original material.

Also, an ethical question should (if not necessarily would) come into question if a company does complain. We will still comply and remove the video, but what could the company possibly gain if they did sue us? They make billions of dollars annually and we are college students who will be lucky if we ever make over $35,000 a year in our lifetimes.

I guess for YouTube the cost of running that kind of operation is far exceeded by the advertising revenue, which is actually really interesting!

As for the ethical question, as a owner of many copyrighted works, I would sue anyone using my materia, and have come close to doing so. Admittedly, I'm not a billionaire, but I think the principle still holds. I don't think it's an ethical question. You get to choose how you use your copyrighted works, and there is nothing unethical about that, in fact, it protects everyone who has ever created anything.

charirama

vinlyn said:

Interesting that you pick a Disney character. Disney corporation is, perhaps, the most strict in terms of copyright infringement of all the Hollywood companies. They even go after public schools that have shown Disney videos on field trips!

I used to work in a recording studio that was part of a college. An animation student approached me one day and told me he was entering one of his works in a show but the music he used was "owned" by Disney and they refused to give him permission to use it.

I helped him by recording an original soundtrack for his animation.

The incident was the beginning of a change in attitude for me. I now think of music as a gift - it is not our gift to have but our gift to share. The music industry is using copyright laws to turn sharing into stealing.

"Don't take anything that is not given" so now I give my music away freely and the gifts that come back to me are immeasurable compared to what I was earning in the past by trying to protect my copyrighted material.

Cinorjer

Copyright is like traffic laws. Everyone hates speed limit laws when they get a speeding ticket or you're in a hurry to get somewhere, but the person who zooms past you in heavy traffic is an idiot.

Even people who produce parodies get sued all the time, although I've never heard of a successful suit. I heard Michael Jackson tried to sue Weird Al over the "Eat It" parody, pointing out the exact same tune was used but lost. On the other hand, rappers who "sampled" snips of someone else's song for their own creation definitely were on the legal hook, even though a tiny bit of melody barely recognziable was used.

It's the law. It has nothing to do with common sense. And the instant Disney has that youtube cut of their property brought to their attention (and they have people trolling the internet looking for stuff like this) they will send a "cease and desist" order and have youtube take it down. Corporations don't sue, usually, if they can get people to stop. Lawyers claim they are forced to do this for even tiny cases, or be accused of not enforcing their rights in the past when they do take someone to court. Donno. Not a lawyer.

As a writer, if someone wanted to publish their own book that obviously uses my characters and fantasy world, I would have a big problem unless they stuck to fan fiction sites on the web. If they wanted to stick what seemed to be one of my characters into their own story or "borrow" some of my ideas then not much I could do about it and not worth getting upset about. Happens all the time.

DaftChris

We've decided to not monetize the video on YouTube.

We're still going upload the video on YT, as well as blip.tv, though.

Beej

charirama said:

vinlyn said:

Interesting that you pick a Disney character. Disney corporation is, perhaps, the most strict in terms of copyright infringement of all the Hollywood companies. They even go after public schools that have shown Disney videos on field trips!

I used to work in a recording studio that was part of a college. An animation student approached me one day and told me he was entering one of his works in a show but the music he used was "owned" by Disney and they refused to give him permission to use it.

I helped him by recording an original soundtrack for his animation.

The incident was the beginning of a change in attitude for me. I now think of music as a gift - it is not our gift to have but our gift to share. The music industry is using copyright laws to turn sharing into stealing.

"Don't take anything that is not given" so now I give my music away freely and the gifts that come back to me are immeasurable compared to what I was earning in the past by trying to protect my copyrighted material.

That's Awesome. I pretty much do the same thing with my art. If I make it to sell it, it never comes out well and I don't have a connection to it. If I make it for somebody, I always love it and am really happy about the time I spent doing it. And it always makes for a better bond in a friendship.

Paul McCartney was right about the love you make being equal to the love you take.