YACQ (Yet Another Copyright Question) - How would you handle this?

smhontz wrote on 7/15/2004, 8:51 AM
One of our church members recently did a two-part presentation on debunking the book "The Da Vinci Code". The presentation was done at a weekly Bible study in front of a live audience. His presentation consisted of lecture, pictures, audio, and video clips arranged in a KeyNote presentation (Mac equivalent of PowerPoint.)

We (the video guys) were asked to tape the presentation so we can produce a DVD that people could either check out or buy at some future date. We did a two-camera shoot but did NOT include any of the Keynote presentation in our shooting, assuming we will add it in post.

So here's the question: every slide in his presentation has the cover of the book as a graphic element in it. He has video clips he downloaded from "Good Morning America" or something like that (interviews with the author). He had some pictures showing details of Da Vinci's Last Supper. He had some maps. He has a picture of some famous historian and an audio clip underneath it. Can we use ANY of this stuff in our DVD? If you're making a DVD about "The Da Vinci Code", can you put a shot of the book cover in it, or does that violate copyright? I can pretty much guess you can't use any of the video or audio clips without permission, but what about pictures of famous works of art like The Last Supper?

And, if we can't use this stuff, what do you suggest we do on the DVD where he makes reference to these things? Do we just maybe show a text transcript of the video interview, with someone else doing a voiceover? Kinda like they do on 60 minutes where they show some graphic in the background, put up some quote, and then the commentator reads it?

Comments

RalphM wrote on 7/15/2004, 10:14 AM
The book covers should be OK to use. Even though the Last Supper is effectively in public domain (althought it does belong to the Vatican), the photographs of it are the creative work of the photographer, and thus require permission, as do the maps.

The interviews are sticky - if you are just using sound bites, you can probably argue fair use.

Your alternative sounds safe, and could be done effectively.
John_Cline wrote on 7/15/2004, 10:22 AM
Call a copyright attorney. Seriously. They're aren't any here.

You can use always use anything with the written permission from the holder of the rights to the material.

John