How much material can we use?

I’m hoping someone can awnser this so I don’t have to get off my ass and search myself. What I want to know are the leagalities in using other people’s sound, sampling i guess, to include in a MM project. Can I use for example up to 5 consecutive seconds without having to lisence? Or doesn’t it make a difference i.e. even a tenth of a second has to be lisenced…

by [a former member] at 2007-08-23 09:08:14 UTC (ed. Mar 12 2008 ) Moscow , Russia | Bookmark | | Report spam→

An here’s the answer according to the US copyright folks:

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#permission

by [former member] | 23 Aug 2007 09:08 | Moscow, Russia | | Report spam→

Hi Michael,
Sorry for late reply to this one! Copyright differs across national borders so I guess it depends on the country you’re ‘borrowing’ content from and then also on the country your’re publishing the work in… In Australia there’s a pretty ambiguous set of rules about this, which can be found at:

http://www.copyright.org.au/

by Ed Giles | 26 Aug 2007 02:08 | Sydney, Australia | | Report spam→

in england it is 3 bars,i think.

by Michael Bowring | 14 Sep 2007 21:09 | Belgrade, Serbia | | Report spam→