[LAU] New film: This is Art..

[Ken Restivo]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 09:37:12PM +0200, Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 05:14:17PM -0700, Norval Watson wrote:
> > I have very little understanding of copyright law but I thought it
> > might be OK to use stuff if the artist/author had been dead for 50
> > years or more? Maybe the museums could claim copyright on the picture
> > frames? ;)
> > Norv
> 
> It's not copyright, there are other laws. Quoting Wikipedia:
> 
>   "Particularly in relation to photographers a number of other
>   considerations may also restrict your right to take or publish
>   photographs. For example a photograph of a person may infringe their
>   right to privacy. Similarly you may not have the right to take
>   photographs in non-public locations. These restrictions are often
>   mistakenly referred to as copyright infringements when in fact other
>   laws apply."
> 
> Those laws are not universal, they change from one country to another. It
> is usually forbiden on many european countries to publish photos taken on
> non-public locations unless a permission is previously granted. Sometimes
> taking photos of public locations is also forbiden, and the laws can be
> quite complex and boring, see example:
> http://4020.net/words/photorights.php

And they can be a huge problem.

I have some fantastic footage of a band I've worked with, shot at a local club, but the owners of the club and the videographer won't let me post it anywhere or otherwise use it for promotional purposes or for sale, because there may be shots of people in the audience whose images we don't have written permission to use. They're worried about lawsuits and  have apparently been bitten by this before.

So, to clear the rights to use it, someone needs to go through it frame by frame and edit out or get clearance from every audience member who might appear, which none of us have time to do.

Actually, they already did that editing on some of it, cutting out a few milliseconds here and there of music. Not too noticeable until I tried to sync up my clean Zoom audio to it, and found it going out of sync constantly because of the guts.

-ken