Fair Use and Copyrighted Video Clips

I am producing a video about Asperger's Syndrome and High Functioning Autism for general education teachers (understanding the disability, practical tips and strategies). We are having an internal debate regarding whether or not we can use clips from copyrighted videos (no more than 30 second to a minute in length). This edited video WILL be going on the web for all to view.

Some envision a cease and desist letter coming in the mail, or worse; litigation. Others think this is far fetched and that we're clearly covered under Fair Use due to the purpose of using the clips, the length, and that we are creating a new meaning or context from the clips that did not otherwise exist in the source material.

Does anyone have any guidance for me here, or can perhaps direct me toward a resource to resolve the issue?

Thanks for any advice.

Brad

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Permalink Reply by R. Scott Young on July 18, 2013 at 1:46pm

Below are the figures I've seen in several places:

Medium	Limits
Video	Up to 10% or 3 minutes (whichever is less)
Audio	Up to 10% or 30 seconds (whichever is less)
Text	Up to 10% or 1000 words (whichever is less)
Poetry	Up to 250 words (or entire poem if work is less than 250 words)
Images	Up to 5 complete images from one artist or 15 from a single collected work

*** Scott ***

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Permalink Reply by Kev on July 19, 2013 at 6:24pm

They are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, you are almost certainly within your Fair Use rights and yes you almost certainly will be harassed by the copyright owners. There is no law preventing them from harassing you. You can fight it of course, and even possibly win, but they know you won't.

I would recommend making a sample version of the video and posting it to Youtube. They will autoflag it for copyright and, in most cases, add advertising to it and leave it up for you to use.

Unless it has something from Fox because they don't allow anything.