Mash-up videos now legal under EU law

Videos on YouTube and other sites which use copyrighted footage from other sources without permission are no longer illegal, following the passing of a new EU law.

The legislation states that the work of others can be used as long as the work has already been made public, is acknowledged ‘sufficiently’ and that only as much of the original work is used as is necessary to make the mash-up make sense.

What does this mean? It means that genius works of parody like Cassetteboy‘s mash-up videos (watch his new David Cameron effort below) and fusions of music and video like DJ Yoda’s AV mixes are no longer illegal to post as videos online.

It’s not clear yet how this might affect YouTube advertising. Users currently have to declare that they own all the audio and video content in an upload in order to place ads on it – but with copyright holders no longer able to sue for money accrued from ads on infringing uploads, who is going to make claims against people putting ads on such videos?

Either way, it’s great news for labels and artists wanting to use footage from others to accompany their music.

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