While reading Geetesh Bajaj’s Powerpoint blog on his excellent Indezine website, I came across a Powerpoint presentation that I think would be useful to all media producers who struggle with copyright and licensing issues.
The powerpoint presentation deals exclusively with copyright infringement as it pertains to photography and is the work of PACA (the Picture Archive Council of America ). It lays out the basic copyright law but it is the case studies that are included that really make this document worth your time. You get to see actual infringement cases, what the infringement charges were, and you can see side-by-side, the actual photograph and the infringement photograph. Other points…there is no fixed % an image can be changed to avoid infringement. That is a common myth that circulates within design studios.
The presentation deals with Fair Use, the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), ISP Safe Harbor and the public domain. All in all, it’s a really good document to know about if you are ever unsure about your usage of a photo or any other work which you want to use but don’t own the rights to.
A good take-away from this presentation that I would emphasize is that often permission and licensing is easily obtainable directly from the source. In other words, instead of going into competition against a photographer, by recreating a photo (the composition), it is cheaper in the long run to contact the creator and obtain permission to create a derivitive work.
The PACA presentation can be downloaded here
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Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and a ton of really great books on successful marketing, wrongly recommends that presenters should include music from their personal CD collections in their public PowerPoint presentations.
The blog post entitled Really Bad PowerPoint, offers five rules to create amazing PowerPoint presentations. Rule number four states…
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Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
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You will breaking copyright law if you give a PowerPoint presentation following Seth’s advice here. Unfortunately, you cannot just rip your personal CD collection and attach those tracks to your slides. When you purchase a CD you are not licensed to use the music for anything other than your personal enjoyment. To use music in a commercial vein, you need to obtain permission from the music’s publisher and the recording company (more about the music licensing process).
This shows that even a savvy guy like Seth Godin can be fuzzy about copyright laws. It makes me wonder how often this practice goes on in corporate America. How often have you seen a PowerPoint presentation accompanied by music that the presenter ripped from his/her CD library?
Royalty Free Music companies like UniqueTracks offer fast and easy music licensing to media producers who in turn, integrate the music into their DVDs, videos, podcasts, radio and TV advertising, Flash and Powerpoint presentations and music-on-hold programming.
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Whooshes, Washes, Crunches, Crashes, Hits, Rumbles, Pings…
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Geetesh Bajaj’s web site Indezine.com is one of the premiere PowerPoint information sites on the Internet.
Besides being a reference for all things PowerPoint, the site also offers many free PowerPoint templates that can be downloaded right to your desktop.
An Example: free PowerPoint templates - origami 04.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Geetesh has also recently added a stock photo library to the site - Indezine Photos. Prices are incredibly low from $7.95 for 1.1 X 1.7 inch sized photos to just $12.95 for a supersized 15.6 X 23.4 sized photo. The choices are superb and the prices can’t be beat. If you use royalty free stock photos in your production work, then you should definitely check out this site.
Indezine Photos.
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