QUESTION???

[Sweetlife]

I am considering buying a "trail cam" to make my own videos. My question is: Is it legal to add music to the video? I know I`ve seen others do it, but I was just wondering if there is a copyright infringement when a person does this. I know that I bought and paid for the music, but I`m still not for sure how legal this is. Does anybody know for sure?

[Slyp_Dawg]

you need not worry about it dude. the RIAA has no reason to go apeshit on you for adding music to a mtb video because if you want the song from the vid you need to have a program that can seperate video from audio, and then you’ve still got the odd noises that the camera speaker picks up (unless you mute them in the editing process) that can get annoying when listening to just the song. that whole process is simply a lot of work that may end up being for a substandard result. it’s a lot easier just to buy the song in question off of itunes or something

[Sweetlife]

Thank you Slyp Dawg. 😃

[bonkedagain]

No, it is not legal. That said, as long as you or anyone else doesn’t make any money off the video then it is unlikely anyone will come after you for royalties. But, that becomes a grey area when you upload the video to a site (like this one) that sells advertising. Again, it is unlikely that anybody will come after you, but you are "stealing" someone else’s intellectual property.

This has been a thorn in the side of videographers who want to use popular music in their productions. Most are willing to pay some kind of reasonable royalty for small use of a piece of music, but there really is no good mechanism in place that would allow that to happen. The companies that release popular music have no incentive to work out licensing deals for small time users so legally getting rights to popular music is effectively impossible. So, many people just use the music anyway knowing that they will probably get away with it.

You can find royalty free music in a variety of places. For example:

http://www.zoomlicense.com/
http://www.musopen.com/

Serious video producers sometimes use music composition software, such as Cinescore, to produce royalty free music. Good software isn’t cheap, but it is generally cheaper than hiring someone to score music for you.

[Sweetlife]

Thanks Bonkedagain, after I read Slyp Dawgs responce, I googled RIAA and found out that these guys mean business (going after grannys and dead people), but like SD said, I don`t think they would come after me. I appreciate the links to the royalty free music, and I plan to check it out.

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