Videotaping conference and copyright restrictions

smhontz wrote on 12/6/2004, 7:50 AM

We have to shoot a church conference in January. We have been asked to tape the general sessions where they have a guest speaker come in and give a talk for a couple of hours. We do live 2-camera IMAG which will feed right into a DV recorder capturing the event. We will then produce a DVD (or two) with all the general sessions on it that people can purchase. (Incidentally, the conference is also being simulcast to 10 other sites via satellite.)

Typically a presenter shows up 5 minutes before they go on and hands us a Powerpoint presentation they want to display during their talk. We have no control over the content of these presentations. They may include clip art, photos, cartoons, video - who knows what, and who knows where they got it from.

Since we do live IMAG, the video being put on the tape will include both the two cameras AND the contents of their presentation when they call for a slide.

What do we do about the sections where they might have copyrighted material? I'm assuming we can't leave them in, and we don't have time to chase down everything used to get permission. We can't exactly chop out visuals, because then the talk doesn't make sense.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/6/2004, 7:56 AM

First, since it's a church, and an educational session, the media may well be covered under Fair Use. Depends on how they're using it. If they show a music video from MTV and talk about it's negative impact on youth, and they aren't showing the whole video, but rather using it as an illustration as to why America is morally falling apart, then it's covered under Fair Use. (not that I feel America is falling apart, this is just an example)

In documenting the event like this, it falls to two sources for clearance; it falls to the speaker/presenter to be sure that his/her works are cleared, and it falls to the company producing the video for final sale/distribution. Sucks, but there it is.
Churches, schools, and NPO's are given a fairly broad latitude when it comes to some sorts of copyright issues, when used in context of education and commentary.