Copyright

Issues and Pitfalls

Music is Complex Music licensing has many variations and nuances, and so I’ve given it its own section. You can find ways of getting real music into your small budget production. But of course you need to make sure that you’re licensing it correctly and / or that you have contracts and agreements in place […]

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Royalty Free

Budget but Beware Royalty free material in the form of photos, film clips, or music is not “free” in the sense of paying no money for use of the material. The true meaning is that royalty free use frees the buyer from paying royalties, or recurring payments, to the content producer. So in the standard

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Creative Commons

Budget but Beware Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that was started in order to increase the number of creative works that are available for others to reuse and share. It is a subset of copyright that replaces the usual “all rights reserved” mindset of standard copyright with “some rights reserved”. The Creative Commons licenses

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Fair Use

Budget but Beware Fair use is a set of limitations on the ability of copyright holders to claim infringement that are baked into the Copyright Act. The ability to claim fair use of a copyrighted work is primarily applicable to fact-based works, non-commercial or educational use, or commentary or criticism. Additionally, the work where fair

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Public Domain

Budget but Beware Public domain works are not covered by copyright. They are owned by the public, and are available to be used and remixed into new works. However, you need to be careful about making completely sure that the material is in the public domain before using it. Also be cautious about works with

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Copyright

Film IP Issues Each of us is a copyright owner. And each of us uses content or media that was created by another copyright owner. Technically, just by fixing an original work in a tangible form, such as a photograph, drawing, or piece of music, we have copyright. You can’t copyright a fact or an

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Intellectual Property

Film IP Issues “I just want to make a little independent film. Why do I need to know about intellectual property rights? Who cares about copyright, trademark, and right of publicity? I’m to small for anyone to notice me.” Sorry, friend. That’s really not going to be true. Once you put your creation out into

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