What's Legal: Producer's Rights

Mark Levy
January 2008

The copyright law can be a two-edged sword or, more accurately, a sword and a shield. If it's your work that you wish to protect, you can register it in the U.S. Copyright Office for $45. On the other hand, if you decide to use the work of someone else, you must be careful not to infringe the other person's copyright, often referred to as intellectual property rights.

To register your video and/or your music or soundtrack, simply download the appropriate form and instructions from the U.S. Copyright Office Web site: www.copyright.gov. You will want to use Form PA (performing arts) for your videos or Form SR (sound recordings) for your original music, if recorded separately. If you fill out the simple two-page copyright form and file it yourself, you can save an average of $300 in legal fees. Consider that a yearly subscription to Videomaker magazine now costs around $12. That means that just this information alone can save you enough money to subscribe to this magazine for the next 25 years, give or take.

Once you have your registration, you will have the ability to bring a legal action for copyright infringement against anyone who, without your permission:
1) produces your copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
2) prepares derivative works based upon your copyrighted work;
3) distributes copies or phonorecords of your copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending;
4) in the case of musical or dramatic works or motion pictures and other audiovisual works, performs your copyrighted work publicly;
5) in the case of musical or dramatic works or pictorial, graphic or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, displays your copyrighted work publicly; and
6) in the case of sound recordings, performs your copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

If you can't prove the damages that you sustained due to the misappropriation of your work, you can request statutory damages, which the judge can set at between $750 and $150,000, at his or her discretion. If the copying is especially heinous, the infringer may even spend up to five years in jail.

Speaking of remuneration, you also have the right to license your work, in order to receive royalty payments when your licensee makes or uses those copies of your work.

That's the good news. But what if you decide that someone else has produced a work that is so good, you'd like to incorporate it in your work? As you might expect, the most common sort of intellectual property that videographers want to use is sound and, in particular, music.

In the case of using another party's music, it's the other party who now has all of the rights mentioned above. And it's you who will not be able to make or use copies or derivative works from the original unless you obtain permission from the copyright holder. Bummer.

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