Music in trailers copyright

[Grim]

For the upcoming trailer of my(commercial) game I'd like to use some copyrighted music. Now, I've seen people posting home-made trailers on youtube or www.gametrailers.com that used popular songs by various famous bands but is it legal or will I get sued for this since it's my game I am promoting?... I know there were several threads about copyright but I can't find what I'm looking for. Anyone has any ideas?

[Igor Hardy]

It's illegal unfortunately. A few months ago I read an article about how much money a band earned for licensing their music, so that it could be used in the trailers of the new Star Trek (and the music piece was indeed used in the trailers only).

[m0ds]

Someone will give you a view using their knowledge of copyright but here's mine based more on experience. In the end, it's only your morality that will cause any problems here. My view is do it, keep it short, maybe 20 to 30 seconds of a copyrighted clip. The worst that can happen is YouTube will ban the video, though nowadays they generally just put an Ad to the song you've used in them. Put a © copyright notice in the video description for extra security. No-one will be taking you to court that's for sure. And I assure you it won't ever go any further than YouTube. And if it does it's not like you just get taken to court or anything. The music owner would ask you to remove it before they take any action.

[miguel]

I did some cheesy Movie Player Video a few weeks ago that had a Joy Division playing along and some hours after I published it on youtube they cut out the sound but left the images.
But I guess that only a few seconds of copyrighted music may pass...

[monkey0506]

Technically the (U.S.) copyright law states that 30 seconds or 10 percent of the song (whichever is shorter) is classified as Fair Use for demonstration purposes. Though YouTube does not respect that and bans videos at random.

For example there are many videos up with the scene from The Shining where Jack Nicholson axes the door and says, "Here's Johnny!" There are also several videos using the song "Lovefool" by The Cardigans.

Putting the two together is a fun little "game" that my friend came up with (the results are humorous (at least to us)), however it's apparently not acceptable for YouTube. Even though they are allowed separately, putting the two together results in the completely arbitrary decision to ban the video.

No copyright suites though, so no worries.

[Grim]

Thanks you all for your advice.
I think I'm going to go for it... Just thought, even if youtube removes the file there are always multiple versions uploaded by different people- I found that with Downfall, you can find several trailers there for some strange reason, and I didn't upload any of them.
  As to Star Trek film , I would imagine a brand like that needs to keep everything fully legit to maintain its golden reputation... (in accordance to the Galaxy Law)

[Nikolas]

Technically the (U.S.) copyright law states that 30 seconds or 10 percent of the song (whichever is shorter) is classified as Fair Use for demonstration purposes. Though YouTube does not respect that and bans videos at random.

Where did you read this? I'm quite curious cause this is by all means not even close to the definition of fair use, as I know it in copyright laws of the US!

Grim: Don't worry. Unless you're earning money they can only sue you for lost revenues. So they will take your earnings! On the morality issue, you're also pretty much good to go... I mean it's definately not a serious crime and if you do credit the composers then it should be fine. (Composer talking here, same as mOds)

[m0ds]

Where did you read this? I'm quite curious cause this is by all means not even close to the definition of fair use, as I know it in copyright laws of the US!

There's an in-depth article somewhere about a guy who went to some length to find out exactly what he can and can't do with music snippets, after YouTube banned his video. It was in his article that I read the above statement too. YouTube have their own policy which seems to differ slightly to "actual" policy...but yeah, I don't have the URL, it's just one of those things you finally reach after reading lots of other pages and clicking random links. But after my own research that same night I remember coming away thinking "fair use" exists and not "this guy made it all up".

[auriond]

In one of my videos (since taken down as it's long served its purpose) I used a piano version of Pachelbel's Canon. I got a notice saying that it was copyrighted and that my video would therefore not be available in certain countries. There was a link I could click to see which countries it would not be available in (Germany).

If you're using it for a trailer - meant for as wide a viewership as you can manage - Youtube may not take it down, but they might limit your viewership due to licensing issues.

[Snarky]

Fair use is definitely real, but there's no hard and fast rule on what qualifies. US courts have on one occasion held that even a 3 second sample from a pop song was copyright infringement (the Biz Markie case), and Notorious B.I.G. had to pay $4 million for having used a 6 second sample without clearance (Bridgeport v. Combs). In both cases the clip was significantly less than 10% of the song, obviously.

The problem with claiming fair use (apart from the fact that you're far from guaranteed to win) is that you have to go to court to make the defense, which for most people is prohibitively expensive in lawyers fees. Therefore, it's more a question of whether the rights holders (or someone claiming to hold the rights, anyway) will go after you.

A trailer for a commercial game would probably be seen as a commercial, and since licensing songs for commercials is a huge business (potentially the most important source of income for some bands--Biz Markie probably used the money he got from Heineken to pay off his attorneys), they are unlikely to tolerate it... if they ever look at it, which they probably won't.

[Goldfish]

Why not just use public domain music, or royalty free music? Royalty free can cost as little as a few bucks, even commercial licensing runs to $30 to $40, worst I ever paid was $500- and that was for an "album"- most of which was ultracrap too. But generally royalty free buyout is dirt cheap and there are gajillions of them.

Then there are no dramas at all and everything you do is not only legal, you're also helping other organisms on the Indie planet...

[Grim]

Then I guess I better pass on the idea... Last thing I need is getting in trouble over nothing, even if there is only a slight probability of it happening.

I suppose the best thing to do is to send final version of the trailer to Micamic, author of the game's soundtrack and it might even work out much better if he composes music that comes to his head when he sees it.

Sure those big fish in the music industry most likely wouldn't bother to sue since it's just an indie... but what if it takes off and becomes the most popular game on the planet all of a sudden? Then I'm in big shit I guess...

[Nikolas]

Just contact him. He's a regular guy like you and me and everyone else. He's 32, not 50 and a beast of marketing direction... Just contact the guy and ask him nicely. There are considerable chances he could say yes!

[jetxl]

AND NOW A TOTALLY NEW HEAD SPINNING DILLEMA!!!

I got a notice from Youtube saying that this Ben Jordan 2 Walkthrough and this Project Xenophobe Walkthrough video contained licenced music. ZOMG!!

This is the notice

Your video, Project Xenophobe walkthrough (3/4) , may include content that is owned or licensed by these content owners:
Content owner: GoDigital Media Group Type: Audio content
What should I do?
No action is required on your part. Your video is still available worldwide. In some cases, ads may appear next to your video.

What can I do about my video's status?
Please note that the video's status can change if the policies chosen by the content owners change. You may want to check back periodically to see if you have new options available to you.

Under certain circumstances, you may dispute this copyright claim. These are:

if the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
if you believe that your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
if you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.

And in the case of the Ben Jordan vid it was WMG who owned the audio content of some in game music I guess (maybe that Spoon song in the bar???).

Nothing changed, the vids were not deleted or muted but I'd just like to know who is in the wrong here.





And why are Björk's own music videos muted on her own youtube channel? That makes no sense, WMG!

[m0ds]

Warner are a c***, that's why! They seem to "own" just about every piece of music in the world, including Mary Had A Little Lamb... I had about 8 metal tracks in a video all lasting about a minute each, and the end of the video features a 20 second intro of one and it was that one that got the video taken off YouTube (courtesy of WMG) and not the longer length tracks. But then saying that my latest ufoid watch has plenty of copyrighted music snippets but not a simmer from YouTube or Warner this time. It's just pot luck with YouTube. You either lose your audio, or worst case the whole video gets banned (but they don't seem to do that so much now that they can just remove the audio or put an ad over it) but nothing more than that. JetXL, I've had a few of those notices - best to check the videos in a couple of months or so because they may have decided to remove them completely by that point.