Fair Use

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mrshanks

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I have received some questions concerning the practice of posting pictures of scenes from a movie, short clips of copyrighted video, or a short sample of commercial music. A good example would be the Black Pearl trailer I created a few weeks ago that featured music from the TV series The X-Files along with a very short shot of the opening scene. Another example might be sharing a photograph of a copyrighted artwork on SoS taken from a museum or such. Regardless of what you may hear elsewhere, all of these examples are legal and legitimate. They fall under what is known as Fair Use. Fair Use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. It allows these practices for the purpose of private, educational, research, non-profit, parody and other non-commercial uses. It is ok to use say 10 seconds of video from a movie to show an example of the Black Pearl in order to point out details of the ship for the purposes of research or educating the model builder. It is ok to post screenshots from Pirates of the Caribbean movies to point out details of the Black Pearl to help elaborate details of the ship to build a better model. None of this is a violation of copyright and no credit to the original creator is required. Fair Use is also what allows you to record a movie on your DVR or VCR and play it back at your leisure for private viewing.

But don't believe it from me. Read all about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#:~:text=Fair use is a doctrine,permission from the copyright holder.


 
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Ophotn said:
Not required, but generally considered the right thing to do anyway.
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Depending on the scenario and situation, absolutely. But that decision is left up to the person. You often see this in a work where someone will annotate as a footnote or reference to recognize the original creator. This would normally be seen in a more formal piece of work such as a magazine article or other publication. Not necessarily on a non-profit, amateur, educational, research, private, or parody type reproduction. I find the parody rules around Fair Use the most interesting as a person can actually use material from an original source, twist it just a little, make fun of it as comedy and then even profit from it. They do not need permission nor need to acknowledge the original content. Examples of this would be Weird Al Yankovick or Saturday Night Live.
 
well I could reference images in the log as original Disney I am not the writer of the log only the translator but if it makes everyone feel better why not?
 
We had a clsssic example of where we had a web site built for us ( commercial) in AUS and un beknownst to us had a photo ( golf image) that was copyrighted to a US site. We recieved a cease & desist( which we complied with), but it just goes to show you do need to check sources. There is a copyright lawer in the US ( albeit in a bit of dodo's at present with NY courts) who loves going after sites that use images without consent and trolling for money.
 
paulv1958 said:
but it just goes to show you do need to check sources.
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Absolutely Paul. Every situation is different. This is why I like to fact-check sources instead of taking the word of so called experts. One of the intents of Fair Use is to minimize the number of frivolous law suits that could overwhelm the court system. There are always negative people in the world that want to attack the peaceful.
 
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