Week 12 - Copyright

Copyright, by definition gives the creator of any media text the exclusive rights to its use and distribution. It is really important for a creative or the rightful owners of any media to know about their legal rights surrounding copyright.

“The development of digital media and computer network technologies have introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional challenges to copyright law's philosophic basis.” ("Copyright", 2017)

Before coming to SAE, I never gave much thought to copyrighting. I was aware of it to some extent but never bothered to indulge deeply with it. This was because in today’s day and age, the guidelines that define copyright, have become blurry. The internet is a vast library where finding any information is as easy as a “Google search”. This is why it has become really difficult to enforce and abide by copyright laws. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to know about copyright so as to know what your legal rights are as a creative of a media text. You don’t want someone else to claim ownership your hard work and you won't like getting sued by a producer for using his samples you found on the internet either. Below is a discussion of copyright laws in Australia in regards to my projects at SAE.

Although, we as students would not have to worry about copyright laws as all of our work for college comes under the umbrella of education. But, things would’ve been different in a real-world scenario. If we were to create and release our projects in the public, we would have to keep in mind the copyright laws surrounding our project.

For instance, in my Remix project for AUD 210, I used two stems (Guitars and Vocal) from the original song. I got these stems from one of the original creators of the content who also happens to be a friend. Although, he gave me an informal verbal permission to use his material, which is fine in this case; in the real-world however, we would have to formalise an agreement because I used a "substantial part" of his work and "Fair dealing" exceptions won't apply (Australian Copyright Council). According to the agreement, I might even have had to pay him a certain fee.

Most of the samples that I used were downloaded from www.freesound.org majority of which were under the “Creative Commons” licence. Creative Commons include six different licence categories shown by the image below.

For the soundalike, in a real-world situation, the copyright permission would depend on at least two factors; if I wanted to just release it for no profit on the internet or if I was going to release my soundalike to drive sales.

For the first, I would have to pay APRA and PPCA a certain licence fee calculated by them. This is because I'm recreating the song composition, which includes melody, rhythm and lyrics which are covered by APRA. PPCA covers the song performance and recording and as my release would be public, I would have to get a licence from them as well.

If my soundalike release was intended for profit using either digital downloads (iTunes, spotify) or physical copies, then in addition to paying APRA and PPCA, I would have to pay a mechanical royalty to AMCOS as well. For digital platforms like iTunes, a mechanical royalty is automatically taken out from the revenue generated.

For the Jingles, I don't think I would see myself replacing audio of other people's videos and releasing them in public. But if I did, I think I would have permission to do so by Creative Commons only if I intended the release on social media. The type of CC licence the video publishers have will also determine how I can use the material. If my work had been for the purpose of parody and satire, then I would not need any licence as my work would be covered by "Fair dealing".

I don't see a point in releasing my jingles for profit though.

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