VIDEOMAKERS CORNER

Issues of concern to people making videos

FAIR USE

We recently submitted one of our videos to a competition sponsored by the National Association of Television Programming Executives (NATPE).  The clip contained approximately 12 seconds of a classic Hollywood feature film. Since we had to sign off on multiple forms that ALL the work was original and we owned the rights to EVERYTHING, I brought this to their attention. I made a Fair Use claim, which is the section of the copyright law that allows authors to quote other authors.  I wanted to be sure I was within current Fair User guidelines.  Jack Sullivan, who is coordinating the competition for NATPE, was nice enough to respond with a pretty thorough explanation of what the industry now regards as a fair use. Here's what we wrote:

Here are the rules for Multimedia Fair Use. Multimedia presentations may include:

Up to 10% or 1,000 words, whichever is less, of a copyrighted text work. For example, an entire poem of less than 250 words may be used, but no more than three poems by one poet, or five poems by different poets from any anthology.
 

Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work.
 

Up to 10% or three minutes, whichever is less, of a copyrighted motion media work (for example, an animation, video or film image).
 

A photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety but no more than five images by an artist or photographer may be reproduced. When using photographs and illustrations from a published collective work, no more than 10% or 15 images, whichever is less.

Monetizing is a big buzz word these days. That so many people are talking about it means that so many people are not getting paid for their videos that play on the web.. This is true for the big guns and networks as well as the small indie.

First, a few painfully obvious realities: Nobody has a safe job any more. We all work for ourselves. That's always been true, it's just more obvious now that the economy is in the tank. The responsibility for making money resides in the individual, employers do not share that responsibility.

In a fascinating article in Time Magazine last winter Walter Isaacson, a print journalist, talks about micro payments and how it is the way to finally put an end the destructive freebie mentality on the web. He proposes a frightening (to some) way to establish and maintain profitability: Charge for the product.

i-Tunes works, Napster made powerful enemies and disappeared. Charging 99 cents per tune keeps you in business and on friendly terms with the world. Stealing other people's creations and giving them away for free, which some people think is heroic in the Robin Hood style, makes it hard for anyone to make a living, and particularly hard for the small independent.

Google and YouTube are acting more like Robin Hood than Napster ever did. AdSense, the Google advertising program, enables everyone to have advertising on their website. This page has four revenue generating ad types. The header, the tower and the square are traditional display advertising enhanced by hyperlinks. The Search Box also generates revenue every time it is used.

You Tube is Beta testing a program that allows partners (we're one) to enable downloads of their videos for a small fee. We charge 99¢ for a single clip, get to keep 45% of the take. We haven't enrolled all our clips yet since the program is still a little buggy (Hint: You can download the videos for free as of today -  June 19). The files are MP4s, you'll have to install QuickTime on your PC. Best place to get it is directly from Apple.

You don't make much money from each ad view, you may get up to 25¢ for a click, but when you build traffic and people start clicking in large numbers, the revenues add up. That's what they mean by micro payments, and they will make a big difference in our media culture.