How to tell who holds copyright?

[uclaLabrat]

My wife just made a little video montage of puppies that she wants to use for her work's FB page, but she put a song on there. Want to make sure she can use it legally. Anyone know how to check who owns publishing rights? Puppy song by Harry Nilsson. He died in 1994 so I don't know how that affects copyright.

 

[Miramonti]

start here

/edit: looks like that's just 1978 to present.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Throw it up on Youtube and see which company gets it taken down. That's who holds the copyright.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Per the copyright database, his wife is the claimant of the recording, although being that it was apparently released on an album published by RCA Victor, the copyright likely belongs (or at least belonged) to them. Regardless of who holds title to it now, you can be bet that somebody does and that uploading the song is a violation of their copyright.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Throw it up on Youtube and see which company gets it taken down. That's who holds the copyright.

Yep that should work actually. Give it like 5 minutes and it will be taken down and you'll see the owner.

Copyright pretty much last's forever now. A big company eventually buys the rights and extends it another 75 years or whatever is a standard term. Chances are WMG owns it.

 

[colonelciller]

absolutely no way it can be legally used

facebook has been known to shut down pages when they get DMCA requests, so do not upload the video directly to facebook whatever you do. if you put it on youtube it may last there forever without being noticed. facebook won't care about a video on youtube that you linked on a facebook page.

create a new youtube account and post the video if you want. if the video helps the company earn hundreds of thousands of dollars expect a lawsuit from the copyright holder

 

[Mixolydian]

All these people saying "No way you can use it"

Yet go to YouTube and type in ANY song/artist and you'll find full-length music... :hmm:

 

[Red Squirrel]

On this subject, for Youtube, (I don't know about Facebook) you can slow down or speed up the video and it usually goes undetected. In fact it's good to make it a habit to speed/slow any video as chances are there will be something copyrighted such as music playing in the background or something. Even something like a dashcam vid is technically illegal as it will most likely have the radio playing in the background. This copyright extremism has actually gotten pretty insane over the years. It's hard to make content without infringing.

 

[Mixolydian]

On this subject, for Youtube, (I don't know about Facebook) you can slow down or speed up the video and it usually goes undetected. In fact it's good to make it a habit to speed/slow any video as chances are there will be something copyrighted such as music playing in the background or something. Even something like a dashcam vid is technically illegal as it will most likely have the radio playing in the background. This copyright extremism has actually gotten pretty insane over the years. It's hard to make content without infringing.

AFAIK as long as you put something like "Music Copyright © [year] [composer]" in the description, you should be fine.

 

[colonelciller]

AFAIK as long as you put something like "Music Copyright © [year] [composer]" in the description, you should be fine.

that's really only a "please don't DMCA me" gesture to appease the copyright holding overlords. there's no such thing as fair use with music unless you're using a very tiny clip in some kind of article on musical transitions or whattnot.

BUT - for a business/promotional use there is absolutely no such thing as fair use whatsoever... if it helps your business, you've gotta pay for the rights.

OP, if your wife's company wants some kind of music to go with the video and wants to do it legit take a look at Magnatune, they are all about offering licensing opportunities for the artists which they represent. you can do it all over the internet... but for business related purposes it is still not very cheap.

 

[colonelciller]

All these people saying "No way you can use it"

Yet go to YouTube and type in ANY song/artist and you'll find full-length music... :hmm:

of course you can use it, but of not in a way that will survive a DMCA takedown notification.

 

[lxskllr]

I'll join with definitely under copyright. Hell, the guy was only born in 1941. That's like yesterday in copyright terms. Also, commercial licensed use is prohibitively expensive for something you're not making money from. I'd suggest public domain, or one of the libre CC licenses.

 

[Mixolydian]

BUT - for a business/promotional use there is absolutely no such thing as fair use whatsoever... if it helps your business, you've gotta pay for the rights.

That's correct - I missed the part where OP said it was for business purposes. In that case, you gotta pay.

 

[SP33Demon]

absolutely no way it can be legally used

facebook has been known to shut down pages when they get DMCA requests, so do not upload the video directly to facebook whatever you do. if you put it on youtube it may last there forever without being noticed. facebook won't care about a video on youtube that you linked on a facebook page.

create a new youtube account and post the video if you want. if the video helps the company earn hundreds of thousands of dollars expect a lawsuit from the copyright holder

Even better, post it to vimeo which is a lot more lenient. Also put in the FB post that the song is copyrighted by x.

 

[CZroe]

AFAIK as long as you put something like "Music Copyright © [year] [composer]" in the description, you should be fine.

That's the laughable thinking what all those "I didn't make this!" kiddies follow. I laugh every time I see one of those videos.

Pro tip: It has nothing to do with plagiarism or credit and everything to do with who owns it and has a right to profit from how it is used. If everyone can get it for free, the artist can't easily sell it, which is why sharing on Napster was declared illegal even though sharing mixtapes were protected by the Home Recording Act.

 

[Red Squirrel]

AFAIK as long as you put something like "Music Copyright © [year] [composer]" in the description, you should be fine.

Nope, I've tried that before. Back in the good days that was considered "fair use" but fair use does not really exist anymore.

Back in the good days the idea behind copyright was good, it was to protect the artists. But now the artists are out of the picture, and it's to protect whoever owns the rights to the content. Big corps. The artists hardly get anything either. It's nice to see that more artists are going independent now though. Here's hoping this continues. The big corps need to die off and music needs to be considered art and not a product.

 

[Dirigible]

The question in the thread title nicely captures how overly-strong copyright laws limit the ability of people to create new works. Just finding out who holds the copyright is a difficult, time-consuming and expensive problem, and that's before you have to actually negotiate with the copyright holder.

 

[CZroe]

Nope, I've tried that before. Back in the good days that was considered "fair use" but fair use does not really exist anymore.

Back in the good days the idea behind copyright was good, it was to protect the artists. But now the artists are out of the picture, and it's to protect whoever owns the rights to the content. Big corps. The artists hardly get anything either. It's nice to see that more artists are going independent now though. Here's hoping this continues. The big corps need to die off and music needs to be considered art and not a product.

Even ignoring record company involvement, it was never OK to use copyrighted works without permission in something you made unless you weren't making money off of it or the work incorporating it and it didn't cheat the artist out of direct sales (substitute for a sale). If the artist made it clear that such uses were allowed with proper attribution (most Creative Commons uses, for example), then it's fine.

Uploading an old episode of Family Guy and putting "Copyright Seth MacFarlane/20th Century Fox Broadcasting Network" or "I did not make this and claim no credit!" does nothing for legality and never did. Some stupid kiddies thought that it did and started putting it on their infringing content prompting many others to do the same. The misconceptions probably originated from authors arguing that certain unauthorized work further damaged them by not giving credit or being made in a matter that reflected poorly on them, attaching their work to something they disapprove of. For example, Matt Stone and Trey Parker were furious when they realized that Michael Moore had put a South Park-style animation right after a selectively-edited interview with them that made it appear to be from them and appear to represent their position on the issue. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if they used something Matt and Trey actually produced without permission to do that? I certainly would not have hesitated to sue.

Many artists have bemoaned their songs being used during political events because it could be seen as an endorsement of a party or candidate that they disapprove of, so event organizers have to be very careful to get the public exhibition permissions through proper channels.