Video sampling

Similar to music sampling, video sampling is the act of appropriating a portion of preexisting video footage (often copyrighted material) and reusing it to create a new video. The legality of video sampling falls under the fair use doctrine in the United States copyright law.

Forms of sampling

Shows like Talk Soup, Best Week Ever, I Love the 70's, 80's, 90's use a lot of video sampling, but of course, this is permissible because fair use allows for sampling that is considered parody or social commentary.

Similar to Disc Jockey who mixes a different records together to create a new derivative work, Video Jockey's (VJ’s) have been gaining popularity for their live performances by mixing various videos together using realtime audio/visual VJ software like VJamm3. So far, not a single VJ has been prosecuted for copyright infringement. But VJ's may have been able to stay under the radar because most them are independent and often, less than wealthy, which makes them an unlikely target for a corporate lawsuit. And until they begin to record and sell their live performances they might be able to avoid infringement lawsuits.

There are also some video artists who use video sampling as their primary source for visually illustrating a story by "amalgamating" a variety American motion pictures together (to reference, suggest, and comment on how popular American media has impacted/influenced the way they relate to and understand the world around them.) These artists have been able to avoid all public legal battles, regarding copyright infringement, as well, for similar reasons to that of the VJ.

Complications

In today’s Digital Age, with the increasing amount of information available on Internet, users are provided with additional ease of access to copyrighted digital media. As the number of people who use audio and video sampling to make derivative work becomes ever more frequent, the boundaries between fair use and copyright infringement becomes more complicated. Most music and film copyright holders view downloading and peer-to-peer networking as a major threat to their sales and are taking action to protect and defend [http://www.prairiepictures.com/copyright_protection.html] their copyrights at all costs.

For those consumers who want to re-edit their legitimately purchased movies, well… they can’t. All retail DVDs come with a security block. In order to bypass this blockade, they have to use illegal software that allows them to make a copy of their movie, and effectively lift the security block, which effectively places them within copyright infringement.

Legal battles

In July 2006, a U.S. District Court judge agreed that CleanFlicks-style editing causes irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies and that there is a public interest in providing such protection. [http://www.reason.com/links/links071106.shtml]

In 2001, 28 major movie studios, television networks, and cable companies sued the creator of an innovative new digital video recorder (DVR) that allows you to skip through commercials and send recorded television programs to a limited number of other DVRs. The studios asked the court to ban the sale of the ReplayTV DVR because it gave ReplayTV owners "unprecedented new tools for violating [the Studios'] copyright interests.” In many ways, the ReplayTV case was a digital re-run of the 1984 Sony Betamax case "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.", where the United States Supreme Court found that it was fair use for consumers to use VCRs to tape television programs for later non-commercial viewing in their homes. This time around, the digital video recorder wasn't as fortunate. After two years of defending themselves the expensive litigation, forced the ReplayTV creators to file for bankruptcy, and in March 2003 they sold off their assets. [http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/Newmark_v_Turner/]

Until recently, most copyright lawsuits involving motion picture media, were usually corporations suing corporations for copyright infringement; the general principle was those with money went after those who had money. Since November 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America has dispelled that common notion filing several hundred lawsuits against average citizens for illegally downloading movies. “Under the Copyright Act, statutory damages can be as much as $30,000 for each motion picture illegally copied or distributed and as much as $150,000 per film if the infringement is proven to be willful.” [http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/060202/movies.shtml]

Related issues

Videos can be downloaded off YouTube's website and viewed offline with various video player applications, this may put them in violation of copyright. Recently they put a 10 min. limit on videos to help restrict full infringement on major motion pictures, and so far they have kept a decent reputation for taking down videos that violate copyright, when notified. The main reason Napster got shut down was because it was a centralized service, and so is YouTube, which may create problems for them in the future. YouTube's defense so far, has been made, through citing a section DMCA that relieves internet service providers of responsibility of the actions of its users, and that lawsuits should be directed toward the individuals. But the controversy surrounding YouTube is fairly new, and they are likely to face many court battles in the days to come.