From: david tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Aug 05 2007 - 10:06:06 PDT
The moral/ethical answer is appropriate away, as long as your
intention is non-commercial and/or transformative of the material.
The PRACTICAL answer is: you cannot use the law as a guideline,
because it is vague, and comes down to individual cases. Copyright
holders do not inhibit artists by winning judgements against them,
but simply by suing them in the first place, which ties the
individual maker up in court, requires substantial legal fees to
defend etc. So one question is: how likely are _you_ to get sued? As
long as you stay away from Disney and circulate your work in low
visibility/art venues, the answer is not likely enough to worry
about. See Craig Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws and examine the Fair Use
resources on Negativland's website.
Where copyright does become an issue is submitting your work to
festivals. Many festivals _ARE_ worried about getting sued, seeing
themselves as bigger targets than individuals etc. So they may
require you to state your work is copyright cleared on an entry form.
You can just lie, of course, but the one place you may get in trouble
is copyrighted music. The RIAA is MUCH more aggresive about these
things than other rights holders.
So, just as far as avoiding potential trouble goes:
flea market home movies: NP, you bought the rights when you bought the reel.
found film clips: nobody really cares anymore
copyright music (Scorpio Rising style, etc.): this I would avoid for
anything to be sent out to festivals
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