Another fun fact. It is quite expensive to license some games to show in TV/Movies.
What is the logic or justification here? It would never have occurred to me that you have to license games if you are filming in an arcade. Do you have to get a license if you film someone playing on a PlayStation? Playing a board game? Playing with LEGO bricks? Making coffee with a Bialetti? Standing next to a car with trademarked design elements? Is there somewhere some legal clause like you can play with your Game Boy but you can not film it without explicit permission? Is it because in the case of games - or software in general - you are not truly buying it but only getting a license to use it? Do I need a license to film someone using a browser or Photoshop? I mean, I can see that you have to license the music in a film if you make deliberate artistic decision and it really contributes to the scene, but what about some random music playing on a radio in the background? What about the radio in the background of a documentary film?
In addition to trademark laws mentioned by other comment. There is also problem of different countries having different laws for product placement. Overall that may result in situation where unless you have a written agreement (and someone is paying to make such agreement) it's safer and simpler to just hide the brands or avoid using a product. Plenty of examples with brands hidden with a masking tape and similar.
As for random music playing in background, where I live there was a period where you technically needed a special license if you had radio playing in any place of business. Don't even need to film it. I think they later loosened or clarified it so that it only applies to when it can be heard by customers (like a hair salon or restaurant) but not when it's only for employees in an office or a warehouse.
> What about the radio in the background of a documentary film?
Copyright and trademark laws complex with a bunch of exceptions for specific cases without which they would be completely impractical. News reporting is usually excluded, whether that also includes Documentaries is not obvious, might vary between countries.
If one watches Korean TV productions licensed on USA Netflix, almost everything that has to do with other media - games, books, music, movies, television including ads is blurred out, there's one called Reply 1988 that is full of 80s Korean references that are almost all blurred out so it's a kind of surreal experience - a viewer has to deduce what the characters are talking about from their conversations. A trailer for a Hong Kong movie is shown in the episodes in the background television set with a blur filter over the prop television set screen and even the poster is shown entirely blurred out in a character's room.
When I was fresh out of music school I rewrote the music for a tv series for overseas use. The budget was very low and they re-used the songs in many episodes instead of paying for the true number of unique cues in the us version.
If I had to guess, it has to do with trademark protection. I went down this rabbit hole when trying to figure out why certain famous buildings were missing from the Spider-Man video game: https://stevenbuccini.com/why-1wtc-isnt-in-spiderman
Quite simply, yes, is the answer to all of those questions. But I think you know that, especially when you get to the audio questions as it has been discussed here ad nauseam with cops playing music so content creators get hit from youtube's algorithms.
I need a license from LEGO if I am making a film where in some scenes a child is building a LEGO set? This sounds quite frankly completely ridiculous to me and I have a hard time believing it.
Also the police thing does not really seem relevant, they are abusing the system but that does not mean that you are actually in violation of any rule if you are filming a police operation where some music is playing at the scene.
What? Are you saying the police are abusing their powers? No, can't be true! /s
The cops doing this shit don't give a damn if it is breaking of rules or what not. They know that all the content creator is trying to do is get some footage they can put on their channel, promote, get clicks. It's not like they are trying to get footage that can then be used in a law suit. So in this case, the cops win because they know that the algos will flag the content immediately for copyright infringement and not allow the footage to be seen. That's the entire point of the cop's actions, so yet again, they win. What will be awesome is when these lazy creators start finding the music being played and subtract it from the audio feed with a some actual audio skillz so the issue won't be a problem, but that's too much effort on their behalf.
I said nothing no to the contrary, I just said that I think that YouTube incorrectly flags those videos and that the police is exploiting this. If YouTube was better at analyzing the videos, then the algorithm would conclude that the video is showing a police operation, that the music is just background noise and therefore the video is not violating anything and the exploit by the police would no longer work.
By "these lazy content creators" I believe you mean people who are out in the streets exercising their constitutional right to protest, and trying to unmask some of the illegal things the police are up to.
no, those are not the cops doing the music thing, at least from what i've seen. the ones playing the music are when people are acting all up in arms about something and go to the station. maybe there's others, but all of the ones i've seen it was obvious someone was just looking to make some content and not actually achieve anything with their interaction with the police.
Somebody should create a Shazam-type tool that scrubs any video for an audio signature of copyrighted material, and then deletes that audio from the soundtrack.
Would be great if Google could just make this a checkbox one could click when uploading a video.
What is the logic or justification here? It would never have occurred to me that you have to license games if you are filming in an arcade. Do you have to get a license if you film someone playing on a PlayStation? Playing a board game? Playing with LEGO bricks? Making coffee with a Bialetti? Standing next to a car with trademarked design elements? Is there somewhere some legal clause like you can play with your Game Boy but you can not film it without explicit permission? Is it because in the case of games - or software in general - you are not truly buying it but only getting a license to use it? Do I need a license to film someone using a browser or Photoshop? I mean, I can see that you have to license the music in a film if you make deliberate artistic decision and it really contributes to the scene, but what about some random music playing on a radio in the background? What about the radio in the background of a documentary film?