Monday, October 10, 2011

A pretty good example of following copyright law

So this YouTube video is used for educational purposes. It is 15 minutes long, but it is accredited to Adam Bellow and most likely put up with his permission. In his slides, he uses all kinds of quotes form people and books and he shows a lot of pictures that are not his own, but he spends no more than 15 seconds on any image so he follows all the fair use laws. The only problem I see is that he does not officially accredit most for the images or quotes he uses. He names off those who hold the copyrights of a lot of the things he uses, by showing the cover of the book he is alluding to, or showing the picture of the person he is quoting, but if ha had a list of all the images with citations at the end or at least accessible to all who watch it, he would be super safe when it comes to fair use. (Plus, I'm sure companies like twitter, facebook, smart board, and such appreciate the free exposure to the public.)

A poor example of copyright law


This YouTube video makes use of The Lion King 2 and Lebo M's song, "He lives in you". Even if this were a class project, strictly for educational purposes, it would be failing when it comes to copyright law. The poster, TigerXtrm, does give credit to both Lebo M and Disney, but I highly doubt he received permission from either of them. Also, the fair use laws say that someone may use up to 10% or three minutes of a video (whichever is smaller), but this person used 4.5 minutes which is definitely not shorter than 3 minutes. fair use also calls for a maximum of 30 seconds for each musical composition, but the entire song was used. This hurts whoever holds the copyright for the music. I wouldn't have to go buy Lebo M's song now, because I can just listen to it on YouTube.