Earlier than 1990’s, producing a video for a school project did cost thousands of dollars from intricate and immense video equipment in order just to come up with outstanding video presentation.
With the advent of digital age lately, we can just simply use free software plus a low-priced digital video camera in producing, broadcasting and publishing your video creation around the globe. Though this made creating and sharing video less complicated and under reasonable costs but this alternative maybe threatening.
Adding some desired songs in video presentation results to more enhanced and captivating production. Music is a great add-on which every video needs in keeping professional quality.
Based on word of mouth, downloading a copyrighted piece within 30 seconds or less is never an infringement. However, if a presenter selects a piece of well-known music and incorporates it to her video in 30 seconds, he still gets into trouble because it’s a copyright issue.
What are the Copyright Issues When Using Music in Videos?
Let me cite a few of these issues:
#1. Non-educational Use of Background music is not viewed as educational use.
Producing your video at a school set up is not a valid ground to claim that the content for the copyrighted music serves for educational purposes. Rather the background music functions as supplementary. The Fair Use Guidelines elaborates what makes music applicable as tool for education. Your selected musical piece should have obvious relevance to the course content. For instance, if you are presenting about Classical Music, it is acceptable to demonstrate Mozart’s piece, “Sonata in A Major.”
The music is classified for educational use. When you present figures of speech and you use some phrases from the popularized song, “Like a Rose,” then you can present the song in your PowerPoint and Video presentation to educate the students. When you use any musical pieces, there should always be relevance between your course content and the music that present in the video.
#2. Redistributing a video which presents a copyrighted music to the net under any other websites without any legal permission is an infringement.
For education purposes, it’s fine to publish your video with copyrighted music in guaranteed secured network. But the moment that these videos are released in a school, organization or public and unsecured websites, such as Youtube, the copyright violation arises.
#3. Claiming Personal and Home use for legally purchased music
Some may claim that they did not download the music from their school-made videos in illicit way; rather they purchased them legally from paid online streaming sites such as iTunes, e-tailer and other service providers.
But the claim for educational use and personal or home use are different scenarios which have entirely distinct rules.
How Do We Resolve these Copyright Issues?
a. Awareness
Educate your subordinates, or students of the impending copyright violations. There are those teachers or students who incorporate music in their own video presentations and eventually publish this output and release it for public viewing. They lack the proper knowledge about restrictions in using the music piece for educational purpose and this should never immune them.
b. Request Permission
Write the music publishers or the copyright holders especially if the music piece is of vital importance in your video production in order to avoid future lawsuits. This does not guarantee an automatic favorable response from the copyright owners but somehow, you address your request and they acknowledge.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The copyright permission should never be based on the artist or composer alone. More likely, the copyrighted music is owned by different parties such as producers, attorneys, publishers, and many others.
c. Acquire a royalty music library free
There is a way to ensure compliance and due diligence. This is through a great insurance policy which you can get from the royalty music library. Students and even the teachers choice their music through this library that best matches the content of their videos.
However, there are some libraries for royalty free music that are tailored-fit for university-use and K12. To verify if the use of this royalty can be allowed to use in education, make sure that this allows:
• film and video synchronization
• Podcast and broadcast privileges
• Duplication and selling of videos within the school or educational environment
• Nonstop use for student portfolios. A student who created his own video presentation stays the owner of the project for repeated use. He should be able to use the project to promote experience and even as a reference when he begins his career.
There are lawsuits that get settled and fixed out of court. The significance of ownership has to be taught to every student; hence, the copyright issues should be given importance because the owner of the creation deserves credits and payments.
In your own ways, do you have any copyright issues that you encounter when you were a student and were using music in video?
Share us your experiences and your ways in resolving the issue.
About Aurora Freegard
