week 9 -sarah,daniel,samuel

First of all multimedia content is known as content that defines what the project is all about. It can be practically anything about the elements of multimedia. However, when acquiring rights to using multimedia content, there are certain copyrights and red tapes to go though if you want to use them for your own purpose.

Since the late 1980s, investors in the multimedia marketplace have been quietly purchasing electronic rights to the basic building blocks of content such as, films, videos, photographic collections and textual information bases. Preexisting content can come from a variety of sources be it pictures from your friend’s computer or from a stock house or image bank offering hundreds of thousands of hours of film and video or still images, available for licensing for a fee.

Besides that, there are certain copyright law issues, which the Malaysian Intellectual Property Law consists of three sections them being copyright, patent and trademark. Basically anything tangible can be copyrighted and it can be done by one’s self. Patenting is more abstract like intangibles such as technology and methodology. Trademark though is for protecting logos company names, mottos, etc.

One of the main issues users tend to neglect is when using somebody else’s multimedia project. Before touching anything that doesn’t belong to you, you must first obtain permission from the owner of the copyright. If you fail to do this, you may find yourself being sued for copyright infringement. This is a serious matter as the consequences are taken seriously by the court of law.

In the area of ownership, let’s say you have a friend who’s creating a multimedia project but at the last minute you also contribute to it. In the law, you may have the copyright ownership of a joint ownership. However, if you’re under the category of “work made for hire”, as an employee what ever you do belongs to the employer if the work fits the requirement. Nevertheless, to meet the definition of a work made for hire, several factors must be weighed to determine whether the individual is legally an employee of an independent contractor.

Some of the things that fall into the work made for hire category are works that are part of a motion picture or other AV work, translations and supplementary works. For example, the English subtitles you see in a Chinese drama TV series doesn’t involve rights belonging to the subtitle editor. As for an independent contractor, the copyright ownership work solely belongs to the person unless the work is specially ordered or commissioned for use and qualifies as a work made for hire, in which case the copyright belongs to the entity commissioning the work.

When developing a project, it is wise to obtain rights and take precautions first just in case you get tied up in law issues you don’t wish to be in. You may be able to negotiate outright ownership of copyrighted material. If the owner still doesn’t want to give up or sell ownership rights, you’re still entitled to licensing the rights to use the materials.