The Internet has arrived as the Age of the Video. While the Internet goes through various phases and transformations, it seems that the hottest trend now is the idea of online videos. From video blogs to behind the scenes clips of televisions favorite shows it seems that every has gotten into the act of uploading videos to the Internet. And while people understand the rules about releasing pornographic or sexually explicit images on sites like YouTube, they may not be paying attention to the laws about copyright infringement. This may not seem like an issue but it’s best to be aware of the pitfalls before deciding to use copywritten images.

The first thing you need to know is that the law states that copywritten images or sounds are only to be used with expressed written consent of the people who own the rights to them. This means if you wanted to make a five minute short film and use a popular bands music for your soundtrack you could be in violation of the copyright law unless you get their written permission and usually that comes with a fee.

Now, sites like YouTube are generally passive about copyright infringement for 2 reasons: 1.) The sheer volume of videos that exist with copywritten images are huge and unless the company that owns them complains it would be very difficult to remove them, not to mention time consuming. 2.) In most cases the companies themselves don’t care because the images are used as good advertisement for the show or in some cases they are tribute videos from fans. This makes it in bad form to ask them to remove them from the site.

So what does all this mean for you? Well it means that first and foremost you should be aware that when you are making a video and setting it to popular music that there may implications for you financially and legally. And while it is unlikely that anything would happen to you it doesn’t mean it couldn’t so it means you should be very careful before doing it.