Do You Use Other People’s Content In Your Own Videos?

To be safe, creators must license the content they wish to display!

Are you sure you have the right to do so?

If you’re a content creator, you may source clips from YouTube or you may simply be embedding videos into your company website. But have you ever thought about the rights that govern your usage of those clips? YouTube has a set of Ts & Cs that you really need to know about …
YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world behind Google itself. Its popularity skyrocketed when Google bought them from the original developers. As the company was used to dealing with copyright infringements via its Image Search functionality, they imposed a stringent set of usage rights on the clips uploaded by its contributors.

Creators should only upload videos that they have made or that they're authorised to use!

That is the first sentence of YouTube’s own copyright page. You must have made the video yourself using completely original content, or you should be authorised to use whatever you’re uploading. If you haven’t, or you aren’t … don’t use it! At least, not without a license.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s video clips or the music that sits behind them, if you infringe someone’s copyright your hard work will be muted at the very least or even deleted completely from the platform. Even worse, you may become the subject of a lawsuit.

Permissions and Restrictions:

You may access and use the Service as made available to you, as long as you comply with this Agreement and the law. You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use. You may also show YouTube videos through the embeddable YouTube player.
The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to:

access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as specifically permitted by the Service; (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders; or (c) as permitted by applicable law;

use the Service to view or listen to Content other than for personal, non-commercial use (for example, you may not publicly screen videos or stream music from the Service);
The Ts & Cs above make it abundantly clear that the content on YouTube is for personal, non-commercial use only. If you are a company using content from YouTube that is, by definition, commercial use. Any company using third party clips uploaded to the site is in breach of YouTube’s Ts & Cs and is almost certain to be in breach of copyright, leaving itself open to litigation.

Worried? You should be!

YouTube scans any upload automatically, and issues strikes when it’s algorithms believe a copyright infringement occurs. You must respond to any claims immediately, justifying the usage of whatever audio or video clip has been flagged and proving you have a license for it.
We recently came across a company who had embedded a YouTube video from a well-known motivational speaker onto their website. In the absence of a license permitting this, their use was, of course, against YouTube’s terms of use and leaves the business open to a copyright claim from the rights holder. A claim could potentially run into millions! Better to get the license … and that’s where we come in.
People often cite the ‘fair usage’ policy on YouTube, but that only applies in the US and is judged on a case-by-case basis. In the UK, we have a fair dealing exception, but again, there’s no formal definition so cases are judged separately,
You cannot make the assumption of fair usage simply because you’re only using a couple of seconds of a video clip, or are using a background track that includes a 50-year old piece of music. And once again, if you are using it for business purposes, fair usage will not apply in 99.9% of cases.

To be safe, users must license the content
they wish to display!

Whether it is for your own website, for social media, even for YouTube, a proper license must be in place, and Display Rights is the company that can provide you with the usage rights at a very competitive price.
Wherever you are in the world, we can help you.
Until next time …
More About Licensing and Copyright
Like to know more?

If anything I’ve written in this blog post resonates with you and you’d like to discover more about, get in touch with us or leave a comment below and let’s see how we can help you.

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About DisplayRights

In 2003, DisplayRights, formally known as Executive Interviews, recognised the rising demand for online video, specifically in the corporate sector, and relaunched itself as a company focused on the recording, repackaging, and rights distribution of television and radio news interviews. Since then, DisplayRights has expanded to become a full-service, global company recording over 150,000 interviews and news clips annually. DisplayRights is headquartered in the UK, with wholly-owned subsidiaries in the United States and Asia.
As the needs of our clients change, so do we! We have now fully rebranded to DisplayRights to better reflect what we do, which now includes talks and presentations as well as executive interviews. We hope that our new brand can better serve how our content partners and clients want to work with us.
We are proudly partnered with the world’s leading business news networks, providing their guests with timely, professionally-produced, and fully licensed video clips to post to their public websites or corporate Intranets, use at trade shows, investor conferences, corporate meetings, and more.
In addition, we now offer registered access to more than 16,000 thought leadership videos from leading educational networks which can be accessed free of charge by anyone, helping them learn, grow and thrive.

Telephone: +44 1908 041290

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Registration will soon be available for licensing content on DisplayRights.

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Executive Interviews is soon to become Display Rights.