Legal Clearance of Multimedia Web Sites
By Catherine Sansum Kirkman
Multimedia Web sites encompass a plethora of creative elements -- from music to photography, text to animation -- and wherever creative content is included, the first priority should be to acquire all necessary rights from the copyright owners.
Though relatively new to the computer industry, these issues are basically the same as those faced on a regular basis in the entertainment industry. Just as movie producers routinely "clear" the rights to everything that goes into a film production, multimedia Web-site developers need a systematic, cost-effective way to legally clear the various creative elements included in a site. Issues of copyright, trademark, personal privacy, and publicity rights must be addressed, or they will come home to roost after the project is finished and on the Web.
The lawyer or other individual overseeing the clearance process must have a firm understanding of the licensing needs for both the Internet context and the entertainment context -- music, film, books, plays, photography, fine art, graphics, animation, and choreography. Otherwise, piecemeal clearance will be the result, with gaping holes left over.
Song and Dance
To use a song, for example, rights must be obtained from the composer and usually the author of the lyrics, both of whom probably assigned their rights to a music publishing company. Rights must also be obtained from the owner (usually the record company) of the "master" copy of the song's sound recording.
