General Is it allowed to show brands in an indy? without permission

[davidpula]

I think I recall episodes of South Park (these are the only cartoons I watch I promise!) where they showed actual images, not animation, of things like Passion of the Christ and other such protected material. I might be wrong. Would this be infringement? I'm fascinated by the matter.

Also, although I'm aware that when someone discovers their stuff being portrayed on youtube they can remove it, there have been countless occasions where some fool dances to a Beyonce song in a video they made, and CNN will air it and laugh about it or whatever. How is tha not infringement? How come the owners of the trademarks or copyrights in these cases rarely care?

I apologize if my previous remarks came off as insolent; I was actually thinking of removing the post until I saw your reply.

Thanks
D

 

[Barry_Green]

I think I recall episodes of South Park (these are the only cartoons I watch I promise!) where they showed actual images, not animation, of things like Passion of the Christ and other such protected material. I might be wrong. Would this be infringement?

Infringement? Probably; but does Mel Gibson or the studio care? That's a whole 'nother matter. It depends on whether it was shown as content, or as fodder for parody.

Now, something like South Park is going to be protected pretty heavily under the "parody" exception; making a parody of something is protected free speech that can not be superseded by copyright claims. And south park is pretty much the very definition of parody. So if they were showing "passion of the Christ" playing on a TV screen in the corner of the room and someone watching it, that'd be an infringement. But if they are using the original material in order to make a parody of that, it's protected speech.

I'm fascinated by the matter.

It is a fascinating and deep subject. Especially for content creators, who (on the one hand) want to have the freedom to use whatever material they need to create their new work, but on the other hand they want to protect their work from anyone else using it!

there have been countless occasions where some fool dances to a Beyonce song in a video they made, and CNN will air it and laugh about it or whatever. How is tha not infringement?

It is an infringement. It's absolutely a textbook case of infringement.

How come the owners of the trademarks or copyrights in these cases rarely care?

'cause they don't care. It's no big deal. What are they going to do, sue the individual who put up the dance video? That's pretty much not gonna happen.

And the news can get away with showing it because there are many exceptions to copyright restrictions when used for journalism purposes.

I apologize if my previous remarks came off as insolent; I was actually thinking of removing the post until I saw your reply.

No worries. As long as the end result is for sharing information so the community benefits, then I'm not gonna worry about it. Thanks for thinking of the tone and for considering removing it though, I do appreciate that you'd think that way.

 

[randomname]

heres an anecdote that might put a few things in perspective. At SXSW this year there was a film called skateland that had premiered at Sundance and was generating some buzz around the festival circuit. During the Q&A, one of the audience members asked how much it had cost the filmmakers to liscence all the popular 80s music they had in the movie, the director responded that they hadnt paid for it yet. Yes, it is illegal, but REALLY, what are the odds of a big record label trying to come down on some tiny indie feature (maybe it would be a concern if it gets real distribution) but think about what would have to happen for them to sue. First off, one of the record label's employees would have to actually SEE THE MOVIE (the odds are already down to below a hundreth of a percent if we're talking about a movie that never gets out of the festival circuit). Then, that employee would have to either have a knowledge of who has the rights to use every single song that label owns, or care enough to go and look to see if that feature owns the rights to the song. Then the record label would have to decide that value of sueing a director who is probably already thousands of dollars in debt outweighs the free advertising they get from the movie.

Does anyone have any examples of a film actually getting sued for using copywritten music? Or even getting anything more than a cease and decist letter?

 

[MovieSwede]

Then we have Murphys Law.

If I would pull a stunt like that, one of the 2 guys in the audience do work for a record company and sue the "lower back part right above the legs" of me.