Creative Commons and 'Commercial Purposes'

[Manus Sweeney]

Quick question..

If music with a creative commons license states 'Don't use this album for commercial purposes' what exactly does that mean in practise?

If its for a video for a non profit organisation? Ok or not ok? Thanks!

[Steve House]

Did you get paid by the non-profit for making the video? Is it being used for fund rasiing?

[Manus Sweeney]

It was more of a hypothetical question.

So 'commercial' refers legally to both the purpose of the film and to the context of its production? (paid or non paid?)

Cheers

[Kevin Wolff]

Here is some pertinent language regarding the non-commercial restriction from the CC license itself:

"You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works."

If you still have questions, you might want to go to the CC website for more information.

Kevin

[Rainer Listing]

And don't forget that music synchronised to a video is a derivative work: the particular CC licence has to allow for derivatives before you can use the music in your video without permission. But it's not like dealing with the music industry. If you send off a quick email explaining what you want to the licensor, they usually will be only too happy to give permission.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Manus Sweeney

It was more of a hypothetical question.

So 'commercial' refers legally to both the purpose of the film and to the context of its production? (paid or non paid?)

Cheers

I am not a lawyer but I believe that is true. If you are contracted to make a video for someone and charge them for the service, you are selling them a commercial product, ie, your services and the production resulting from them. If you incorporate music, it is for your commercial purposes. It doesn't matter if the end user is using it commercially or not, whether they are showing in a theatre charging admission, running it as an ad on TV, etc, or just viewing it in the privacy of their home for their own personal pleasure, YOU as the producer of the video have sold a product in the marketplace, you have used the music to create a commercial product you subsequently delivered to your customer and that would constitute a commercial use of the music. If money changes hands either in the creation of the video or in whatever it's later used for, it would be commercial use. I think that's a distinction a lot of event shooters overlook. They focus on the client's ultimate use and ignore their own. The client may not be using the resulting video commercially but the videographer who charges to make the video is using all of its elements, including the music, commercially when he creates the video he gets paid to deliver to the client. You have used the music to earn your fee.