Consider CREATIVE COMMONS

[Dave Watterson]

At the Festival of Nations this year I saw an excellent film about young people who are being treated for cancer. They spoke openly about how they got on with their schoolfriends and about their feelings.

The film ended with a CC licence - that means it is available for others to use in a non-commercial way without payment. I specifically asked the author about it and he intended that any teacher, parent or youth leader who wanted to show the film, should be free to do so without worry about seeking out the director for permission or indulging in piracy.

That film was in Austrian, so not much use to English-speakers ... but the principle of making our work legally available to others seems to me worth exploring.

You can read about the scheme/s at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses and http://creativecommons.org/

I have often teased non-commercial film makers who add copyright symbols to their films - don't they want other people to see and enjoy them? Maybe adding the CC symbol of Creative Commons would give them the protection they want, let them retain some rights and yet allow wider use of the movies ...

Good idea?

Dave

[fraught]

I do think it's a great idea, but if someone was to use footage from any of my films i would still like the final say so. Not sure if the CC allows this or not?

I do put a (C) at the end of my films, just purely to try and protect myself. But if anyone asks me to use any of my footage etc, depending on how they wish to use it, i would be more than happy to give it out.

Although saying that... once a film is uploaded to YouTube, does that not automatically give people the right to use your footage? Just referring to my film 'Overtime', when we had our little scuff with the press back in 2008, clips from 'Overtime' appeared on the telly without my say so. :-/

[Dave Watterson]

NO - your material on Youtube is still your copyright and should not be downloaded unless you specifically post a download link.

Youtube's Terms of Service say to all users:
(L) "you agree not to access Content or any reason other than your personal, non-commercial use solely as intended through and permitted by the normal functionality of the Service, and solely for Streaming. "Streaming" means a contemporaneous digital transmission of the material by YouTube via the Internet to a user operated Internet enabled device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be downloaded (either permanently or temporarily), copied, stored, or redistributed by the user."

(M) "You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content. "

------------
Of course it is easy to download stuff from Youtube and almost any online video service - what's more there are plenty of free programs to do just that. So any publicly available video could be ripped off.

I reckon tv exposure of your film ought to have been paid for - it would have made a helpful contribution to the Nystagmus Network Charity - but it is probably too late now to worry. At least the exposure brought the charity to very wide public attention.

-Dave

[fraught]

Cheers Dave, good to know that bit regarding Copyright.

Getting back to the CC licence... i certainly think it's worth dabbling with, especially if you are making factual films.