Non-commercial copyright

devil wrote on 11/5/2012, 7:32 AM

I'm totally confused, as a newbie. Imagine that I am making a Magix Video Pro X3 video for Christmas greetings which I plan to send to my friends via YouTube, using limited distribution. I have found a piece of incidental music that fits my theme perfectly on this Magix site. I would like a yes or no answer to:

May I legally use this piece as a background music for my video without paying any royalties and without problems from YouTube, provided I acknowledge title and author in the credits? Yes/No, please!

Comments

gandjcarr wrote on 11/5/2012, 10:51 AM

Hi,

This is a user forum, you are not speaking to anyone from Magix here, so no one on this forum can give you a yes or no answer. You best bet would be to take a copy of the End User License Agreement (EULA) for the music that you purchased to a lawyer or if it was included in Video Pro X a copy of that EULA to a lawyer and see what he or she has to say.

The video pro line of products seems to have a much more liberal set of terms and conditions than the consumer counterpart as far as use goes. If you purchased the music from the Catooh site, they usually have a number of licenses available to cover different needs and uses of the material.

Remember too that the use of this type of material are subject to the country that you use it in. So again if you are really worried, take it to a lawyer.

As for publishing it on YouTube, the YouTube copyright search engine is going to flag pretty much anything that sounds like something where the copyright is owned or administered by any company that they have in their database. The YouTube copyright enginge will send you a notice, but no action will be taken unless the copyright holder that they attribute the music to asks for your video to be removed. If they do, you will get a "strike" against your account. Most do not bother to ask for removal unless you are clearly doing it for commercial purposes, but that is up to them.

I have had many times where some music I used was flagged but when I dispute the claim offering to send a copy of my agreement from the company I purchased the license from those flags have always been withdrawn.

Again, this is a user site so every thing you are likely to hear from other users are simply opinions.

Good Luck,

George

johnebaker wrote on 11/5/2012, 1:47 PM

Afraid my answer is a question - is the background music generated within VPX or is it a commercial song / tune ?

If the first then do as George says or ask clarification from Magix as this area is very grey in terms of copyright.

If it is a commercial song / tune then I think it would be a definite no-no without permission from the copyright owner. However this again can be a grey area depending on whether you are technically 'publicly broadcasting' the video or not.

Have you searched for a suitable song / music which is royalty free or copyright free - there are many sites offering these - just Google 'free music' or 'royalty free' music.

John