Legality of commercial vhs tape to DVD for personal use

[wiseant]

Hi all,

Did a search here and google - couldn't find any legal precedents or legal opinions:

Legality of commercial vhs tape to DVD for personal use - especially for Canada, USA, UK?

I don't want to stir a controversial topic - just wondering if anyone has any factual information.

Any assistance is appreciated

TIA
wiseant

[hech54]

Legality is the least of your worries...Macrovision is.
VHS is a dead issue and a dead horse. Nobody is looking because nobody cares.

[wiseant]

hech54 - I don't have a problem with Macrovision - I have yet to encounter a tape that I couldn't record as well as capture

I have some commercial VHS tapes that have not been made into commercial DVDs and probably never will - but there may be an interest - especially live action sports tapes, clips with famous people, special events, etc

My next question is: if I upload a clip from a commercial VHS tape and clearly indicate that I don't have the copyright and I name the copyright holders - would the copyright holders take action or could they care less?

[hech54]

My next question is: if I upload a clip from a commercial VHS tape and clearly indicate that I don't have the copyright and I name the copyright holders - would the copyright holders take action or could they care less?

That is FAR from the thread title and NOT what the first post said. To "upload" a clip is not "personal use".

Long story short. I am in possession of an almost pristine copy of a rare televised concert. I have the entire concert up on YouTube for all to see. The only reason it is still there is because I have the producer's unofficial "OK" to have it there. Even the band members have ZERO say in whether I can do what I do or not...they did not pay for the production...the producer did.
The producer of the concert still runs a production company and has produced many many big shows, mostly television award shows. He allows my clips to stay on YouTube for promotional purposes only. He is waiting for someone to pay him to release it to DVD....and he is constantly negotiating with the past and present members of the band, trying to get all to agree to terms and royalties and song selection and songwriting credits, etc etc etc.....but sadly this concert is pretty much at the bottom of his "to do" list.
You don't own the footage. Somebody does own the footage. "Uploading" is not personal use.

[DB83]

This may come under the umbrella of 'fair use'. You have purchased a copy of a program. In that purchase, you do not own the contents. In fact the company who made the tape in the first place probably do not own it. It would, invariably, as Hech54 points out, be owned by the copyright owner who could be the producer of the content or even someone else. The tape will have been licensed from the copyright owner.

Your purchase gives you the right to watch tape. However, the fair use, can extend to you making a back-up copy of it on other media such as dvd FOR YOUR OWN USE. I see some people call these 'Safety Copies' and then proceed to sell them which, I believe, is not allowed even if the purchaser owns a copy of the content on tape as the sale has invoked the original copyright.

[wiseant]

hech54 - sorry - I should have used a different thread title

What I wanted to do was to establish that it is legal for someone to make a DVD from a commercial VHS tape for personal use. Any clips that I want to upload to my website are solely for the purposes of demonstrating the effects of video filters - changing the hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, luma and color denoising - so I can show before and after comparisons - these would be clips of 5 minutes or less. I intend to use a "subtitle" on the clips indicating something like "for demonstration purposes only"
Please advise if I need to start another thread
TIA

[aedipuss]

if i'm not mistaken, fairuse of copyright material allows for no more than 30 sec. clips.

[jagabo]

if I upload a clip from a commercial VHS tape and clearly indicate that I don't have the copyright and I name the copyright holders - would the copyright holders take action or could they care less?

They will take action. At least a DMCA takedown notice.

if i'm not mistaken, fairuse of copyright material allows for no more than 30 sec. clips.

It depends on the context.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-30100.html

Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses

Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses:

• Criticism and comment -- for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.
• News reporting -- for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report.
• Research and scholarship -- for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
• Nonprofit educational uses -- for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use.
• Parody -- that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way.

In most other situations, copying is not legally a fair use.

http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP

There are no hard and fast rules for fair use (and anyone who tells you that a set number of words or percentage of a work is "fair" is talking about guidelines, not the law).

[victoriabears]

dear me

talk about an issue that needs no answer

[jman98]

if i'm not mistaken, fairuse of copyright material allows for no more than 30 sec. clips.

As jagabo points out, this not a true rule and it's just a suggestion or guideline. All bets are off because if the copyright holder feels litigious, they could always try to take you to court and anything could happen.

[wiseant]

Thanks for the responses.

jagabo - thanks for the links - I'll read through that info

re the 30 sec thing - I have heard about that numerous times - maybe it is an urban myth

[jman98]

wiseant - I just noticed that you are from Canada. We're specifically talking about US law here with "fair use". Canadian law could be different for all I know.

[Lodovico]

Even 1/24th of a second could be a copyright violation.

But you wouldn't get a chance to debate it. Your web host would take down your site as soon as they got the cease-and-desist notice.

[lordsmurf]

So much misinformation here. Ugh.
Example: "1/24th of a second could be a copyright violation" = ridiculous.

Read this post: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326153-Legality-of-commercial-vhs-tape-to-DVD-for-p...=1#post2019793
Thanks to jagabo on that.
... and then ignore everything else that's been posted here.

[wiseant]

lordsmurf: I agree - the two links jagabo provided are quite sensible

[hech54]

So much misinformation here. Ugh.
Example: "1/24th of a second could be a copyright violation" = ridiculous.

Read this post: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326153-Legality-of-commercial-vhs-tape-to-DVD-for-p...=1#post2019793
Thanks to jagabo on that.
... and then ignore everything else that's been posted here.

Really?

You don't own the footage. Somebody does own the footage. "Uploading" is not personal use.

[lordsmurf]

It's still far more complicated than that. There are not "rules" to this as much as there are "guidelines" to what can and cannot be done. And it's constantly evolving, re-evolving, and being fought over. There's not a simple rule list. You can use something even if you don't "own" it, as long as certain criteria are met. (Even the term "own" is complicated, as you're obviously aware of based on one of your earlier posts here.)

Again, jagabo's quotes/links are the best overview into what quickly becomes a complex topic.
Even more than the video tech. (Yikes!)

This is not a topic for a forum. It's too complicated, and needs scholarly info, as opposed to layman understandings or opinions. It's one reason I never really get into it. There are a number of topics that simply do not have good information available anywhere online -- this is one of them.

[hech54]

Uploading it....to anywhere....is NOT personal use.....period.
Let me rephrase that.
Uploading it....to anywhere for others to view....is NOT personal use.....period.

[wiseant]

some info on copyright re Canada: [August 2006]

http://www.langara.bc.ca/library/facservices/copyright/copyright.html