So we all know that "critical review" generally falls under fair use. But what exactly qualifies as a "critical review" for the purposes of fair use? More specifically, how much must the borrowed material be directly related to the review itself?
Like, for example, if you use gaming footage from someone else's gaming channel - with his own unique player character in the footage - for use in your own review of that game, does that count as a "critical review" for purposes of fair use?
Case in point: SuperCarlinBrothers does a lot of Harry Potter lore discussion videos. They prefer to go by book canon when they make their theories. But they will often use clips from the movies spliced in between shots of them sitting in front of the camera and talking. Considering that they repeatedly make it clear to their fans that they prioritize book canon over the movies, it definitely seems that the movie footage they use is superfluous. It is purely there to give the audience something to look at while they make their case for book-canon lore discussions (since movie clips are generally more exciting to watch than them just sitting in front of a camera or putting up text-only excerpts from the book).
Then again, those guys are probably big enough that they can probably get express permission from Warner Brothers to use those clips. The question is ... are they even required to? The main focus of these types of videos is lore discussion, which is a sub-category of story analysis, which is in turn a sub-category of critical review. The question is not whether the videos, on the whole, fall under fair use, but whether their use of the movie footage is too distantly connected to the main point of the video to qualify for fair use.
And more importantly, can other youtube channels (e.g. small ones) use footage they didn't necessarily create, as part of their otherwise-fair-use videos?
Last but not least, I would greatly appreciate if you didn't just give your opinion on the matter, but backed up your answers with legal citations to prove it.
Like, for example, if you use gaming footage from someone else's gaming channel - with his own unique player character in the footage - for use in your own review of that game, does that count as a "critical review" for purposes of fair use?
Case in point: SuperCarlinBrothers does a lot of Harry Potter lore discussion videos. They prefer to go by book canon when they make their theories. But they will often use clips from the movies spliced in between shots of them sitting in front of the camera and talking. Considering that they repeatedly make it clear to their fans that they prioritize book canon over the movies, it definitely seems that the movie footage they use is superfluous. It is purely there to give the audience something to look at while they make their case for book-canon lore discussions (since movie clips are generally more exciting to watch than them just sitting in front of a camera or putting up text-only excerpts from the book).
Then again, those guys are probably big enough that they can probably get express permission from Warner Brothers to use those clips. The question is ... are they even required to? The main focus of these types of videos is lore discussion, which is a sub-category of story analysis, which is in turn a sub-category of critical review. The question is not whether the videos, on the whole, fall under fair use, but whether their use of the movie footage is too distantly connected to the main point of the video to qualify for fair use.
And more importantly, can other youtube channels (e.g. small ones) use footage they didn't necessarily create, as part of their otherwise-fair-use videos?
Last but not least, I would greatly appreciate if you didn't just give your opinion on the matter, but backed up your answers with legal citations to prove it.
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