Cinema Law: Using Footage for a School Project

By Jeremiah Reynolds
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/blog/item/cinema_law_using_footage_for_a_school_project_20090908/
Q: I want to have my school class make a virtual online art exhibition as a class project. Can they legally use a few seconds of footage from various art films and/or magazine or book images of art on the school's Website?

A: The purpose of copyright law is to promote creativity by providing legal protection for “works” that have been “fixed in a tangible medium.” By law, a copyright owner is given the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display the copyrighted work. The art films, magazines and book images that you reference in your question are “works” that would be entitled to copyright protection, meaning that if those works were copied or reproduced without the owner’s permission, then the owner could sue for copyright infringement.