Hey Playtonics,
Yesterday our favorite Ptwon tipster, Anne “Shell Shock” Sheldon, told us about this PD/ Legal Affairs Desk (or “LAD”) approved story on NPR titled “OK Go Fights For Its Viral Video.” According to the article , OK GO has left EMI in part due to their insistence that websites should be stripped of their ability to embed the band’s Rube Goldberg-inspired music video for their new song “This Too Shall Pass.” We here at the Legal Affairs Desk would like to acknowledge that while no legal recourse was taken in said dispute, it appears that legal channels, though murky, exist to mediate conflicts regarding embedding videos. The best result I found from a google search using the keywords “law”, “embedding”, and “videos” turned up this article titled “Embedded Video and Copyright Infringement” from Citizen Media Law Project. Some IP lawyers are quoted and some laws are cited but the upshot is that it’s hard to say whether embedding a videos is legal. That comforts us here at the Legal Affairs Desk since we strive to report the law rather than break it.
Playtonic Dialogues 