pre-existant soundtracks...

Caveman · Post by **Caveman** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 1:32 pm

Me and my friends have gone into documentary making and we were informed that it's legal to use up to 29 seconds of a pre-existant track in a production. Sounds a bit beardy - anyone know if it's true?

btw. Can we just imagine I'm not a newbie please?

xbreaka420 · Post by **xbreaka420** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 1:35 pm

i think this was already discussed raptor knows the details but i think the gneral rundown was that you cant.

Post by **Matt** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:54 pm

These sort of rules also vary a great deal depending on what country you are in.

Here are some US related resources :

US Copyright Office
http://www.copyright.gov/

What Is Copyright
http://www.whatiscopyright.org/

Stanford University Library
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 7:40 pm

And generally documentaries are not considered news for fair use standards. ANd yeah, you can't in the US or according to the Berne convention. Any work copyrighted in a signatory country, is offered the highest level of protection based on either country of use, or country of registration.. In other words, if the protected property was registered in teh US, then no matter whether or not your country's copyright law allows use of a fixed portion, you can not use any of it.. By the same token, if a copyright ewere registered in c ountry that allowed use of 30 seconds, and you lived in the US, you could not use any of it...