Final Copyright Question - then I'm good :)

[mcfluffers]

Out of control? If you made a song and Sony used just a small part of it in a major commercial, you'd expect to be compensated or be able to force them to stop using it.

I would think Nickelodeon owned that song, and if Sony used my music I probably wouldn't care if they just used a snippet of it and used to make something more entertaining. But if they took my entire song, claimed it as there own song to make money from it. Then I would have a problem. I am not claiming there song as mine, and not making money off of that song any ways. So why do they act like I went. You ever hear that song best day ever? Ya I made it... its mine. :/ that's what copy right was intended for. Not for finding small movies that use the verse "It's the best day everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" 4 times, then claim I am taking money right out of their wallets lol. But you are right on the fact that I didn't make that song and used it without permission.... But I am not claiming I made the song, and am not making any money from it. So how is it against the law?

 

[Tarmack]

Copyright law is based on a great deal of legal mumbo jumbo. Patent and trademark law are similar.

They all have one very important feature in common. If the copyright/patent/trademark holder is aware of infringement and does not act, they can lose the ability to protect their assets later because they've now set legal precident against themselves.

This makes anyone with potentially valuable assets extremely protective. If you use a Metallica song for example, and Time Warner knows but doesn't come after you. And then they come after me for doing the same thing, I can argue to the judge that they didn't go after you. Now obviously it's not quite as simple as all of that, but you get the idea.

 

[DBMC]

You also have to take the Fair Use provision into consideration though. There's a great article I read on it recently that actually gives people like us a lot more freedom to use portions of existing work in a creative fashion. The article specifically cites YouTube as being an integral part of expanding Fair Use so that we can do more things with existing work (ie, choreographing our own videos with copyrighted music). It's not letting me post the article so Google "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video" - it's on the Center for Social Media site.