Re: Another Copyright/Permission question

There's no free ride on this. Well, if you can find public domain footage that fills the bill, that's a different story.

If you re-staged and re-shot famous scenes as parody, there is *some* chance it would pass under fair use, but fair use is not a free pass either. Fair Use is what you tell the judge after it has gone thru the trial process and you've been found guilty of using the protected image without permission, at that point a judge decides if "Fair Use" applies and exonerates you. But you don't ever want to have to go that distance. Even though you are not charging to show it, in a way you are, because people have to pay the restaurant to sit there and eat while this plays. Money is changing hands as part of being able to view the product and that's what a court will look at.

An Italian restaurant was hosting "Soprano's Nights" where they just had the show on a big screen in the dining room, unaltered. They got a takedown notice. Another Italian Restaurant ran loop tapes of Sinatra hits as background music without paying the licensing fees. They got shut down.

A fun charity fundraiser where people sang along to a screening of "The Sound of Music" a la "Rocky Horror" - also shut down tighter than Julie Andrews' vocal cords. You can use those true life cases to show your client that you're looking out for them by warning of shaky legal grounds for the request.

It will be your choice to comply with the client or turn the job down. 99 times out of a hundred, you might even get away with it. But that hundredth time could become very expensive to you indeed. Is this one job really paying enough to be worth risking your car, your house, your business on?

Here's where you get to be the hero and come up with an alternate idea that still meets the ultimate goal but does it within the rules of the game. And best of all, you can bill for it.