Does Your Video Use Mainstream Music?

First appearing in VideoMaker Magazine, this following article explains the law concerning Fair Use Vs Copyright Infringement. Although this article talks specifically about YouTube, laws across application vary little.

In May 2008, Viacom brought a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for allegedly failing to protect the rights of copyright owners. The most common cases of copyright infringement involve using songs in a film or video without permission of the copyright holder, or placing segments of movies or music videos on websites where it is easy for the public to download them. Such actions have cost studios millions of dollars in royalties. Therefore, the giants of the entertainment industry have begun cracking down on websites such as YouTube.

YouTube, in response to these accusations, started to remove videos that may use segments of music or film without the copyright owner's permission. Accounts posting such videos have also been suspended. Fan videos that incorporate a celebrity picture slideshow using a song as the primary audio track and videos of musicians playing covers of famous songs are common examples of videos that have been deleted from YouTube as a result of alleged copyright infringement.

Besides the removal of the video and suspension of the account, penalties for such actions can be extreme. If a music company believes that posting such videos is music piracy, it can file suit and be awarded up to $150, 000 per song. On the criminal side, jail time in federal prison is also a possibility for anyone convicted. Because of these harsh penalties - even though only a remote possibility - it is extremely important to protect yourself from any allegations of copyright infringement. Copyright violations are equivalent to theft, both legally and morally. Proving there is no infringement can take time and effort. Why risk the penalties?

If your work is for educational purposes, then use of copyrighted material falls under the "Fair Use" provision, which allows reasonable use of copyrighted work, without permission, for research, criticism, or education. A notice at the beginning or end of your production giving credit to copyright owners for their work is usually sufficient. Be aware, however, that not citing sources, or attempting to pass off copyrighted material as your own work, is not considered "fair use." It is plagiarism and can result in harsh penalties.

Works with expired copyrights are considered to be in the "public domain" and can be used without fear of liability of infringement. The major catch in this provision is that copyrights have very long terms before expiry. For example, any sound recording published in the United States after March 1989 will not be available to the public until March 2049 at the earliest. As of January 2009, the only sound recordings that are automatically available in the public domain are those published before 1923, and those published between February 15, 1972 and March 1989 without a copyright. All other recordings may be in the public domain, but further investigation would be required.

Both "fair use" and "public domain" are gray areas, making it difficult to ensure that you are not infringing the rights of others. The safest action to take is to get permission (usually a written contract, known as a license) from the copyright owner of any material being used in your video production.

The music labels commonly hold the copyrights for sound recordings. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a major blanket organization that works with many major labels and is an excellent resource for you to obtain a license to use music as part of your production. Licensing agencies can aid in procuring a license. Examples of licensing agencies include The Harry Fox Agency, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) and Sound Exchange. Most licensing agencies are blanket agencies that cover many labels. To get licenses for just one or two songs, however, it is usually easiest to contact the individual label.

Licenses can be requested using a simple letter to the copyright owner asking for authority to use the copyrighted material. The letter should incorporate a complete explanation of the work to be used and how you will use it. Include a place in the letter for the owner to sign and send back a response.

Contributing editor Attorney Mark Levy specializes in intellectual property law. Saba Siddiqui is a senior in high school and a legal intern for Mark Levy. She plans to attend law school after university.

Editor's Note
Since Mr. Levy's story was first posted, as of late September 2009, Google (owner of YouTube) has now changed its rules regarding copyright. Google will begin to allow copyright content to remain up unless the copyright owner objects. This new decision comes in most part from a popular viral wedding dance video that has become Sony Music's 8th most popular song.

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14261/

An Overview of Video Digital Compression

As customers continue to demand a higher quality production, the demand for compressing that production onto DVD’s, CD’s, and streaming onto the Internet becomes more of consideration than ever before. TV screens, computer monitors, and even cell phone screens have exploded in size over the last five to seven years. Filling those screens with high quality picture and sound can be an expensive process, but with modern-day compression methods, the process has become more manageable and more affordable.

The goal of compression is to shrink the digital video file down to a smaller size without compromising quality or frame size. When it’s time to view the video, a decompression (expanding) process must take place. A crude analogy to compression/decompression is a fluffy down comforter, which is placed into a plastic bag and vacuuming sealed. It’s easy to store, transport and when time to use it, simply open the bag and allow the comforter to return to it’s normal size. Another example is how iPod’s® can store days of music on a single unit.

Two basic types of compressions, or “codec” exist: lossy and non-lossy, or lossless. Lossy compression types lose quality, and data during the process, while Lossless, or non-lossy compression types retain quality, but successfully reduce the amount of data needed to view it.

Often times, videos are compression with an incorrect codec for the application. Pay close attention next time an online video is watched. Occasionally, while the video is playing, there are horizontal lines visible during playback. This is an example of using the incorrect codec for online streaming. Many others exist, but the scope of this post is to make aware of the countless different available compression processes.

As customers continue to demand a higher quality production, the demand for compressing that production onto DVD's, CD's, and streaming onto the Internet becomes more of consideration than ever before. TV screens, computer monitors, and even cell phone screens have exploded in size over the last five to seven years. Filling those screens with high quality picture and sound can be an expensive process, but with modern-day compression methods, the process has become more manageable and more affordable.

The goal of compression is to shrink the digital video file down to a smaller size without compromising quality or frame size. When it's time to view the video, a decompression (expanding) process must take place. A crude analogy to compression/decompression is a fluffy down comforter, which is placed into a plastic bag and vacuuming sealed. It's easy to store, transport and when time to use it, simply open the bag and allow the comforter to return to it's normal size. Another example is how iPod's® can store days of music on a single unit.

Two basic types of compressions, or "codec" exist: lossy and non-lossy, or lossless. Lossy compression types lose quality, and data during the process, while Lossless, or non-lossy compression types retain quality, but successfully reduce the amount of data needed to view it.

Often times, videos are compression with an incorrect codec for the application. Pay close attention next time an online video is watched. Occasionally, while the video is playing, there are horizontal lines visible during playback. This is an example of using the incorrect codec for online streaming. Many others exist, but the scope of this post is to make aware of the countless different available compression processes.

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More than half (62%) of Internet users have watched content on video sharing sites, up from 33 percent in 2006. The majority (89%) of Internet users 18-29 say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36 percent do so on an average day.

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With moral what it is and individuals vying for any work available, just to keep the mortgage paid. It’s the duty of everyone to help those who need it. I must admit that my intentions are not truly altruistic because it sure makes me feel good when I lend a helping hand. I also understand, what the Quantum Physicists call-The Law of Attraction, and what Christians refer to as-you reap what you sow, that as much as I give, I receive exponentially.
However, my ego aside, its important for us all to reach out to those in need. My way of helping is through video. Individuals who are out of work and who are actively seeking employment are deserving of my resources. I will produce a video resume for those actively seeking at no charge. I will illustrate how to promote your video resume through email, and on the web, or even through snail mail.
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By Bernard d'Espagnat / Source: The Guardian

I believe that some of our most engrained notions about space and causality should be reconsidered. Anyone who takes quantum mechanics seriously will have reached the same conclusion.

What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality".

This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of ... Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.

How did I arrive at this conclusion? My interest in the foundations of quantum physics developed at quite an early stage in my career, but I soon noticed that my elders deliberately brushed aside the problems the theory raised, which they considered not to be part of physics proper. It was only after I attained the status of a fully-fledged physicist that I ventured to take up the question personally.

To put it in a nutshell, in this quest I first found that whatever way you look at it the quantum mechanical formalism, when taken at face value, compels us to consider that two particles that have once interacted always remain bound in a very strange, hardly understandable way even when they are far apart, the connection being independent of distance.

Even though this connection-at-a-distance does not permit us to transmit messages, clearly it is real. In other words space, so essential in classical physics, seems to play a considerably less basic role in quantum physics.

I soon found out, as often happens, that these things had been known for quite a long time. Schrödinger had even given them a name: entanglement, and had claimed entanglement is essential. But strangely enough he had not really been listened to. Indeed he had been unheard to the extent that the very notion of "entanglement" was hardly mentioned in regular courses on quantum physics.

And in fact most physicists felt inclined to consider that, if not entanglement in general, at least the highly puzzling 'entanglement at a distance' was merely an oddity of the formalism, free of physical consequences and doomed to be removed sooner or later, just through improvements on the said formalism. At the time the general view was therefore that if any problems remained in that realm these problems were of a philosophical, not of a physical nature so that physicists had better keep aloof from them.

I was not convinced I must say, and in the early sixties I wrote and published a book and some articles developing physical arguments that focused attention on such problems by showing that entanglement is truly something worth the physicist's attention.

And then a real breakthrough took place in that John Bell, a colleague of mine at Cern, published his famous inequalities, which - for the first time - opened a possibility of testing whether or not entanglement-at-a-distance had experimentally testable consequences.

The outcome confirmed my anticipations. Entanglement-at-a-distance does physically exist, in the sense that it has physically verifiable (and verified) consequences. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that some of our most engrained notions about space and causality should be reconsidered.

Bernard d'Espagnat is a theoretical physicist, philosopher and winner of the Templeton Prize 2009. He is the author of On Physics and Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2006

Money is Your Reward for Serving Others

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