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Fair Use Laws and Reviews

KurnDerakKurnDerak Registered User regular
edited August 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
I'm looking to try and start video reviews on movies, and would like to try and get a grasp of what is and isn't covered under fair use before I start. I know that you can use copyrighted material under fair use for the purposes of reviews, parodies, and similar activities, but I'm unsure of the limitations of the use. Such as how much of a movie can I use in a review, can I use other copyrighted material as part of the review if it directly pertains to the review, and other such things. The idea I have right now would be to look at animal/nature movies (Anaconda, Jurassic Park, Ghost and the Darkness for a few examples) and pick apart accuracies and inaccuracies in them. So as part of this I would like to include information I find on-line, in books or from documentaries, everything would be cited. I don't plan to use any copyrighted material that isn't involved in the review, such as them music/background music would either be from the movie reviewed or made by me.

Also, how bad is YouTube for uploading things like this to? I know there are a lot of people who do, but then I also hear sometimes about people using copyrighted material legally having their videos/accounts taken down.

KurnDerak on

Posts

  • PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    Unfortunately there's huge gray areas in fair use laws. Its largely a "know it when I see it" kind of legal standard so its not like you can use 32 seconds but once you hit 33 you're crossed a line. Another factor is the onus is generally on you. If you had a video up of your family reunion it could be pulled due to a copyright claim (I'm only slightly exaggerating).

    (IANAL)

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  • KurnDerakKurnDerak Registered User regular
    Something I'd forgot to add. Do/should I own a copy of any video I use? Is it considered allowable to rent the videos I use as opposed to buying? Are there even guidelines for this part of it?

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    It's not really important for the sake of reviewing but its not going to hurt your case. Screencaps here and there probably aren't going to get you dinged on fair use, streaming video is the hard one.

    (IANAL)

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    Fair Use is intentionally not clear cut, because intent is such a fuzzy subject.

    Consider what fair use considers:
    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.

    For a review, the review may or may not be commercial in nature (such as reviews that are broadcast on TV that collect revenue from ads or subscriptions) but the material itself is not being reproduced commercially. The nature of the work is a "critical review," where it is reasonable that you will have to reference the original video. The amount is also based on this idea of how substantial the amount you use is compared to the whole -- are you showing "substantially" the whole movie? Are you showing a scene? Things like showing major twists are twofold in reviews, incidentally -- if the movie is based substantially on a twist, showing the twist may actually be a substantial portion of the movie, and it will also piss off viewers as you're giving away the whole shebang. But amount and substantiality are funny things -- is 5 seconds substantial? If you lift the most important part of something, that 5 seconds can actually be really substantial! Consider classical music (which is largely public domain), where there is a very well know theme for a song, but a large section in the middle that many people don't recognize. Sampling the "major theme" even if brief can be more substantial than sampling 5 minutes of the middle that no one recognizes.

    Finally, the last point has been, from what I've read of copyright law, one of the most important elements regarding copyright law and fair use. Does your use negatively impact the potential market for the original work? For critical works, this may seem like it's intended to stifle bad reviews. However, plenty of people enjoy bad movies! By posting a review, you are still ultimately increasing knowledge of the film and the courts don't really care about the content of what you're saying in your review -- they're concerned with how the reproduction of the original work will affect the future market or value related to the original work.

    So if you were to review a movie and your review was 30 minutes and you simply edited the original work to cut out all the bad parts and simply talked over the top of the movie, arguably many people would watch your review rather than watch the original film. People would be watching your copy of the film instead of the original, and that's bad.

    Copyright is a funny thing, though, and if you review movies (especially negatively) and post them on youtube, you will probably have to deal with takedown notices at some point in the future. Should you worry about copyright to the point where it prevents you from doing your movie reviews? No, but you should be aware of it and be reasonable in the use of original clips.

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  • useless4useless4 Registered User regular
    I could have swore DCMA had "decrypt for purpose of reviews" included in the language.

    I will have to go back and check because I have always wondered the same exact thing as the OP.

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