Can I create a series where I use photos of celebrities as my characters?

[Te-Erika]

I have created a new web series and finished the first episode but I use photos of celebrities I found on Google to demonstrate my characters. It's just still photos of them but they are my ideal characters.

Say I have Britney Spears photo but her character is Jamie. I never mention Britney's name, just use her photo. Is this a violation?

 

[markkaz]

Stars have rights to their own likeness and you can be subject to litigation. If it was a parody, if it was a joke, if it was newsworthy, you might be ok. If you are creating long-form or re-occurring episodes, that could be a problem.

 

[Te-Erika]

Thank you!

 

[KatyAdelson]

I moved this to the copyright discussion forum.

 

[Crown]

There are 2 potential issuse IMHO:

1) Copyright infringement - You'd be using photos that you don't have the copyright to. Celebrity photos are often very valuable and photographers get paid a lot to take them because they spend a lot of time and money to take those photos and so there is a real risk of getting a strike for doing this. There is a solution to this problem. You can use celebrity photos from wikipedia so long as the license is Creative commons (or public domain). and you give full credit in the description of the video. I explain this method here: http://yttalk.com/threads/images-of-football-players-copyright-issues.290467/post-2331033

Using the above method, here is a photo of Britney Spears that has a Creative Commons license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britney_Spears_2013_(Straighten_Crop).jpg


2)Like @markkaz said above, even if there are no copyright issues with the photo itself, there could be issues with "misrepresentation" and image rights stuff. - ie Britney Spears team could in theory take legal action because you're using her "brand" or "identity" to gain views. They could also argue that you're misrepresenting her. This is more of a grey area than the copyright issue above.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. ^^

 

[Te-Erika]

Thank you for taking the time to offer advice!