Fair Use Guide
Fair Use and Copyright Concerns
Most video submission sites will screen your videos for copyright infringements and remove the clip or ban your account if such infringements are found. How do you stay on the right side of the law?For more information on Fair Use and other copyright issues, please check out these resources:
- Stanford University - This provides a really great overview of what Fair Use is and the factors involved in the legal decisions.
- centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use/. The downloadable PDF is especially useful.
- Duke Law put together this entertaining and easy-to-read comic to summarize the issues around Fair Use and Public Domain: Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW.
- The Creative Commons Podcasting Legal Guide provides some great tips on how to navigate the tricky waters of copyright law while creating your content. This addresses public domain, fair use, and creative commons licensing, etc.
Unless your use of music or performances by others is okay under the doctrine of Fair Use under US copyright law, you need to be sure that you have the rights to use the music in your video. You can do this by getting explicit permission from the copyright-owner or by using royalty-free music.
The sites listed below offer royalty-free music that is totally free - download tracks right away and use without any fee. Please make sure to pay special attention to the stipulations of any Creative Commons-licensed music, as certain CC licenses require attribution to the original author or prohibit commercial use of the material (uploading to video sharing sites is considered commercial use).
- partnersinrhyme.com
- brainybetty.com
- incompetech.com
- jamendo.com
- openmusicarchive.org
- opsound.org
- ccmixter.org
- thefreesoundproject
- eStockmusic.com
The following sites offer music that can be used royalty-free after a certain base fee is paid:
Don't cut corners by using materials in your videos that violate Copyright laws. Many sites will screen your video prior to posting for copyright abuse. It is against the Terms of Service to use copyrighted material without permission in your videos and you will suffer the consequences. There's nothing worse than having a video go "viral" and then having it pulled or having your account suspended because of a copyright infraction just as the traffic starts pouring in.