Peter Wayner and Salvatore Salamone
The world of multimedia development is filled with more hidden legal land mines for developers than any other type of product. The programs bundle many different forms of artistic expression into one product, and each form carries its own standards and practices for getting permission from the creator to make copies. You can't just digitize that neat ending to Star Wars and glue it into your game without getting permission from many people.
What it all comes down to when producing a multimedia title are the "two Cs"--clearance and cost--according to Dror Futter, an attorney at the law firm McCarter & English (Newark, NJ). A title such as a multimedia encyclopedia may have 300 video clips, 300 photos or still images, and 300 associated pieces of text
, all of which are subject to different licensing and royalty fees.
Clearing the rights to each item and agreeing on a fee to use each piece can be tricky. For example, how do you compare the pricing of a two-page written piece with that of a 2-second sound bite? "Traditional licensing is based on use," says Futter. However, that model can break down with a multimedia application. "You may have to base things on potential use," he says.
Futter gives the following example to illustrate what new types of issues developers of multimedia applications are facing. Suppose you have a virtual-museum multimedia package that displays a set of images every time the program is run (this is analogous to exhibits in the lobby of a real museum). And suppose the package has a Roman art room that requires nine mouse-clicks to get to. "Do we price the art in the Roman gallery the same as the images in the [virtual lobby]?" asks Futter.
Today, there are no clear guidelines to help developers when they face
these types of issues. "Right now, everything's done as a custom deal," says Futter. And this has opened the door for specialists who deal in these issues.
For example, Total Clearance (Mill Valley, CA) helps developers wade through the morass of legal requirements, which can be daunting. Jill Alofs, the president of Total Clearance, explains that guilds and unions have set established rates for the reuse of all types of material that will go into film, video, and TV media. But this is not yet the case for multimedia products (e.g., CD-ROM). Multimedia developers will need to consider preexisting content early in their products' life cycles.
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: CURRENT STATE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION
SURVEY: WHAT SHOULD BE COPIED FOR FREE
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Telecommunications Infrastructure Task
Force surveyed 1600 b
illustration_link (45 Kbytes)
Legal Land Mines Cloud Multimedia
