Copyright Law
Copyright is an I.P. law which protects owns creative work.
“Copyright protects written theatrical musical and artistic works as well as film book layouts sound recordings and broadcasts.” - http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-about/c-auto.htm
The copyright automatically applies to any original work created by you that qualifies for the copyright protection.
So what does copyright apply to?
It applies to written work such as software and databases, theatre (dance and mime also fall under this category), music, artistic works (including photographs), TV & Film and performers of spoken word (poets etc.).
Exemptions
Copyright infringement is the use of others intellectual property without their consent. The original creator can potentially sue the person infringing their I.P. although this can be debatable.
A parody is an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. Often you will see music parodies on YouTube these might sound like songs already released by an artist but since the lyrics have been changed for comical reasons.
If a part of a film or some kind of artistic wrk is shown and then critiques, it is exemped as it's used for “The purposes of review”.
An example of infrigement would be when someone is reviewing a full film, while it is playing in the background.
Another copyright free example would be educational. Schools, Colleges, Universities etc. can all use copyrighted material for "educational purposes". Students can use the copyrighted work to learn about their subject and can more or less recreate the work as long as it is only used for educational purposes. The work created by students that was created from the copyrighted material, cannot be used in any promotional videos or used to advertise something.
Establishing ownerships
The owner/author is the person who creates the work. There are established rules for each of the artistic work categories:
When it comes to films etc. the author could be the producer and/or the principal director.
In the case of sound recordings, the producer would be the recognized author of the artistic work(s). In a case of a broadcast, the owner/author is the person making the broadcast.
Also if the person is broadcasting another transmission or relays on a "reception and immediate re-transmission (this includes services such as Twitch, Ustream etc) the author is the one making that other broadcast.
In simple terms this means that if someone is broadcasting using Twitch, that service is holding the copyright.
Gaining permissions
It is very important to be able to identify ownerships. A very simple method to gain permission to use a copyrighted material from the original creator is to ask - send them an email.
This is a good way because if the owner approves, you will have the permission on record and can easily retrieve it if needed.
Sometimes, the authors can authorise the use of their work under specific conditions. For example, if you want to use someone's music recording in your game, and the author lets you use their track, they can ask you to give credit.
Example of gaining permissions:
No comments:
Post a Comment