Short clips of copyright content - fair use?

Atomic Shrimp

Atomic Shrimp

New Member
I've noticed a number of popular channels using short clips of copyright content within their content - the most obvious example that springs to mind is David Picciuto's (DrunkenWoodworker - Make Something) 'Sand in the place where you live' - when he's sanding a piece of timber, he plays a short clip of the REM Song Stand

Does this count as fair use within a monetized video?
 
Okay, before I say this: I am NOT a lawyer, but this is my understanding of the situation regarding fair use.

Fair use isn't simply "using short clips", but is also about how short those clips are and how they are used in the context of the other work they are being used in.

In a broad sense, fair use is intended to allow for a number of things, including education, research, review and parody (without it, any negative review of something could be taken down with a copyright strike).

I've seen channels use short, copyrighted clips (generally 1-2 seconds long) for comedy. Is this fair use? I don't know. It could be.

Having a video not be monetized would be a count in favor of fair use, but making money off something does not necessarily disqualify it from being fair use.

You see, it's entirely up to a judge to decide whether or not fair use applies in any particular case. This means that there are a lot of cases where things are taken down that SHOULD fall under fair use, but the defendants just don't have the cash to go to court and fight it out.

Personally, I have yet to see a copyright strike because of a super short clip of something. Buuuuuuuut, I shy away from using anything copyrighted in my videos.
Then again, I know for a fact that I'm kind of on the paranoid side when it comes to copyright, so yeah. :p

Source: I did a ridiculous amount of research on this a few years ago when I was setting up a gaming channel. It was all from Google searches and Wikipedia.
 
I believe any usage whether 1 second or 1 hour is not acceptable.
But some do 'get away with' using up to 15 seconds of anothers video/music before the YT algo picks up on it.
 
EVO said:
I believe any usage whether 1 second or 1 hour is not acceptable.
But some do 'get away with' using up to 15 seconds of anothers video/music before the YT algo picks up on it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, not sure if EVO is 100% right here (again, I'm not a lawyer), but I just operate with that assumption. Better safe than sorry, right?
 
I'm extremely curious of this also. Casey Neistat, arguably one of the most popular YouTubers in existence, frequently uses copyrighted music (songs from the radio) as transitions, without any mention of permission or copyright notice in the video description. His videos get millions of views, so it's not some obscure thing a copyright holder wouldn't find.

How? LOL
 
Fair use means that while you're using the original work, you're adding something to it, or it simply doesn't offer the original value anymore. Let's say you'd use some copyrighted song in your video, but overlayed it with your commentary, interrupted it here and there (removing the audio), then it could be considered as fair use. But if you'd use a clip, let's say from a movie and added nothing to it (commentary, music, pictures, footage), it would most definitely NOT be fair use, even if you added something AFTER that content.

Fair dealing is quite different, as it considered to be including reviews, criticism, raising awarness, news... Simply put, if you used a copyrighted content and made it clear that it's for any of those, even without your input, you might be able to monetize it.
 
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