A Copyright Issue

Indeed I think you need authorizations, whatever the length. Except for movies older than xxx years which are then on the public domain. For the exact number of years I'm not sure though, so take your infos... Maybe call the Sabam ?

Maybe I'll do that yes... I can't imagine that 1 or 2 words out of a movie would be the cause of a law-suit... But there are more stupid laws aren't there... ;)

thx... any more opinions, or people who know things about this...?

You should clear the samples before releasing anything. I don't think you ought to do it before sending a demo though. Do it when you're sure something is getting released (and have the label help with the legal stuff).

Yup, law are sometimes so bad :( But I would be carefull.

Now, I don't know what movies you are talking about. If it is an obscure movie, maybe you don't need to care about it. An other aspect to examine : Is the sample recognizable ?

actually it's for a contest... the winner gets to record a professional demo and stuff... thing is that it's organised by some official organisations...

what mik says makes sense to me....

any more thoughts?

thx people...

To be on the safe side, don't put it on any demo either, since you'll probably put your contact information on the info sheet. Especially for a contest, I mean, those people will 9/10 RECOGNIZE your samples, no?

If I remember correctly it needs to be 70+ years old to be in the public domain, and even then rights can be bought by organisations. You can not just use 2 minutes of Mozart with a beat. Case in point, I believe a big star was sued this year because she used world music samples believed to be 300+ years old from Africa and it turned out some African rights organisation owned the rights to the rhytmic parts...

There is, however, a minimum of a sample you can use legally I believe, but it's something like 3-5 seconds so...

Anyway all that info is on the sabam website. You need to pay for each sample used for a minimum of 500 copies of disks I believe, which will turn out to be 100 to 300 euro for the legal use of a sample, so.... 8o

recognisable...well for me it is since i know where i got it, and i'm sure the movie makers will recognise it yes...

the other 2 tracks on the demo are safe, 1 without samples, the other with samples, but i did the sound for the film, so no problem there...

when you release a disc, the label with which you release the album is responsible for clearing the samples :)

public domain is like 75years .. but sometimes copyrights are renewed :) so that rule doesn't always work :)

i wouldn't worry too much, i'd leave the samples in there, and if the label really like the shit :

• they'll help you clear the samples
• they'll suggest an alternative to that movie sample (like recording something similar etc...)

Originally posted by : Jemenfish

To be on the safe side, don't put it on any demo either, since you'll probably put your contact information on the info sheet. Especially for a contest, I mean, those people will 9/10 RECOGNIZE your samples, no?

If I remember correctly it needs to be 70+ years old to be in the public domain, and even then rights can be bought by organisations. You can not just use 2 minutes of Mozart with a beat. Case in point, I believe a big star was sued this year because she used world music samples believed to be 300+ years old from Africa and it turned out some African rights organisation owned the rights to the rhytmic parts...

There is, however, a minimum of a sample you can use legally I believe, but it's something like 3-5 seconds so...

Anyway all that info is on the sabam website. You need to pay for each sample used for a minimum of 500 copies of disks I believe, which will turn out to be 100 to 300 euro for the legal use of a sample, so.... 8o

well the samples are very short...

i don't think it's 5 secs long, but I'll have a look...

thx jemenfish...

my best friend used a 3-4 minutes speech sample from magnolia's with tom cruises' voice. he did that with arnold schwarzeneger too. snatch and other movies were sampled aswell. he even wrote down the speeches and registered it as his at sabam... not a problem at all...

as long its a small run of copies you press (vinyl/cd) dont worry