We are doing educational videos, need help with understanding fair use

[RocketJohnnyRocket]

Both my girlfriend and I are going to begin doing educational videos. Her videos will be a bit different than mine, but we both want/need to use video and picture material other than our own to illustrate a point.


I spent all night reading up on "fair use", and I feel quite confident that we are well within our rights as educators.

My girlfriends videos (her name is jenny), jenny's videos all have to deal with gardening. Her latest video is about an insects life cycle. She did all of the research, and will be giving credit to those scholarly journals, books, etc. The only problem is, we feel it would be necessary to show a few seconds of a monarch butterfly engaging in metamorphosis in order to "illustrate a point". That's it. She is not going to repeat any of the words "verbatim"from the original video. Its moreorless going to be a mash-up of information from several sources in order to educate on the topic of an insects life cycle for the enrichment of the gardening community.

For me, I am doing scientific videos dealing with all of the "epic things in our universe". I want to teach people about the wonders and beauty of what's around us. My first series is going to deal with things in our universe that are epic. I will pose the question for each video topic, "what make this epic". From there I will use information from several sources that I will cite, along with the information that I am able to conjure up. I do, however, feel it is necessary to present visual material for my videos. I plan on using video material that isn't my own for the purpose of illustrating a point. The clips will be only a few seconds in duration, and will deal directly with the information being presented. I plan on giving links to the video I used, even if it's only for a few seconds.

The most important question for whether it falls under fair use or not seems to be will it take away from the originals market share.

Thanks to anyone who wants to help.

 

[LyfeWithDragons]

If you don't own it, don't upload it.

 

[JohnnyFox]

If you don't own it, don't upload it.

Oh pipe down with that. Pewdiepie makes millions a yr postin b******t he doesnt own.

Anyway to answer your question jus dont use music. Video as long as it isnt a well know tv series or movie ur safe. U r still under fair use but YT is a b***h abt the definition. So jus use open domain stock footage

 

[RocketJohnnyRocket]

Oh pipe down with that. Pewdiepie makes millions a yr postin b******t he doesnt own.

Anyway to answer your question jus dont use music. Video as long as it isnt a well know tv series or movie ur safe. U r still under fair use but YT is a b***h abt the definition. So jus use open domain stock footage

Ok thank you. As far as music we are using creative commons, also music that we create ourselves. We will definitely use stock footage as our 1st option for video references. I did some research, and as an educator we are allowed to use video sources that specifically pertain to illustrating a point. Also we plan on using a few seconds of "factual videos" rather than creative properties.
Thanks for the help, I understand it's hard to help a stranger when it doesn't have any effect on your life. I appreciate it.

 

[LyfeWithDragons]

Oh pipe down with that. Pewdiepie makes millions a yr postin b******t he doesnt own.

Anyway to answer your question jus dont use music. Video as long as it isnt a well know tv series or movie ur safe. U r still under fair use but YT is a b***h abt the definition. So jus use open domain stock footage

Bigger YouTubes can get away with a lot more. Tobuscus places tags in his description, which isn't something you're allowed to do. I'm just saying, if you don't own it, don't upload it.

 

[Tarmack]

Here's the thing about YouTube and Fair Use. Fair use is a lot like the freedom of speech amendment. It is a provision in law that permits you to do certain things. However, much like freedom of speech, there is nothing inherent within Fair Use that requires companies like YouTube to respect it as it is a legal remedy only. You may well be legally entitled to create and monetize a video with someone elses content, but that doesn't put a legal requirement on YouTube to accept that entitlement because you are bound by their terms of service for using their platform.

ContentID as a system is designed to match content to known sources and nothing more. It can be painful to deal with sometimes because it works in favor of the original content owner, not the derivative content owner. As such while SeigeTV misses some nuance with the if you don't own it, don't upload it comment, it is a general rule of thumb.

Here's what I would suggest. First of all, do some searching online for sources of content that will work for your purposes that are licensed under Creative Commons licensing (Attribution 3.0 to be specific). These content sources are almost never loaded in to ContentID because all you need to do to use them is give credit for the source. If you cannot find any, then proceed with lesser known commercial content first, and only move to more major content sources (national geographic, BBC, etc) if nothing can be found in the previous examples. If you do use commercial sources, do your best to not use the original audio as ContentID is better at matching audio than video.

From there, always keep your video project file saved and don't remove assets until you know the upload is fine. ContentID will match your video very very quickly, so you will know shortly after release whether there is a match or not. So if you get a match for the content you were concerned about, you can take the video down quickly before the content owner has a chance to issue a DMCA takedown. You can then re-render the video with some other source content and try again.

Just try to think of fair use as you would driving a car. Yes, you can legally cross at a crosswalk whenever you like, but if a car isn't paying attention you still lose even though you were legally in the right. Fair use is only a defense in court and while we'd all like to believe it works online all the time, the fact is that this is not always the case.

 

[RocketJohnnyRocket]

Here's the thing about YouTube and Fair Use. Fair use is a lot like the freedom of speech amendment. It is a provision in law that permits you to do certain things. However, much like freedom of speech, there is nothing inherent within Fair Use that requires companies like YouTube to respect it as it is a legal remedy only. You may well be legally entitled to create and monetize a video with someone elses content, but that doesn't put a legal requirement on YouTube to accept that entitlement because you are bound by their terms of service for using their platform.

ContentID as a system is designed to match content to known sources and nothing more. It can be painful to deal with sometimes because it works in favor of the original content owner, not the derivative content owner. As such while SeigeTV misses some nuance with the if you don't own it, don't upload it comment, it is a general rule of thumb.

Here's what I would suggest. First of all, do some searching online for sources of content that will work for your purposes that are licensed under Creative Commons licensing (Attribution 3.0 to be specific). These content sources are almost never loaded in to ContentID because all you need to do to use them is give credit for the source. If you cannot find any, then proceed with lesser known commercial content first, and only move to more major content sources (national geographic, BBC, etc) if nothing can be found in the previous examples. If you do use commercial sources, do your best to not use the original audio as ContentID is better at matching audio than video.

From there, always keep your video project file saved and don't remove assets until you know the upload is fine. ContentID will match your video very very quickly, so you will know shortly after release whether there is a match or not. So if you get a match for the content you were concerned about, you can take the video down quickly before the content owner has a chance to issue a DMCA takedown. You can then re-render the video with some other source content and try again.

Just try to think of fair use as you would driving a car. Yes, you can legally cross at a crosswalk whenever you like, but if a car isn't paying attention you still lose even though you were legally in the right. Fair use is only a defense in court and while we'd all like to believe it works online all the time, the fact is that this is not always the case.

wow! Thank you very much for that insight. I will only use video sources as the very last resort if I feel it is completely needed to illustrate a point. Once again thank you for taking the time, I'm sure it will help others that see this as well.