Suzie’s House 551 : Copyright Infringements

“Miranda! Just who we need.” Tracy jumped up and came rushing toward Miranda as she stepped into the kitchen.

The place as loaded to the gills with kids. In fact, all the usual suspects from the band to Ben and Lisa were there. Something about the expectant way they looked on made Miranda feel that this sudden rush was an ambush.

“Well, it’s nice to be needed,” she said a bit dryly. They probably wouldn’t notice anyway.

“We want to make another music video.”

“Oh. Good for you.” Miranda grabbed a plate and glass from the cupboard. It looked like they were having a reprise of that afternoon’s picnic for dinner.

“We want to use footage from your advertisements.”

“What?” Miranda fumbled her plate.

“It’s cause everyone in school is calling us sell outs. We’ve got a song in mind and we need the advertising footage to really make it work.”

“Probably wouldn’t work anyway,” Miranda muttered under her breath. To her way of thinking, they would never be sell outs. They were just trying to make it all work. She had a lot of respect for that. But in her experience once those snooty types started calling you a sell out, you were sunk. A satire of yourself would just go over their heads.

“Anyway, can we have it next weekend?” Lisa had gotten up and joined Tracy.

“No.” Miranda didn’t try to soften it. “That would be copyright infringement. Unless you’re planning on paying the creators of the images for them.”

“Who holds the copyrights?”

“It’s work for hire, mostly.”

“But you made it all, didn’t you?”

“Well, it depends on the ads. For instance, a lot of the footage for the florist were stock clips that I purchased in the customer’s name from a business that provides that sort of thing. The car lot always provides their own. The dealership owns the rights. I took a few of the real estate and restaurant pictures, but most were offered by the real estate agents and people from the restaurants.”

“Crud.” Tracy drooped

“But if we asked, I bet they’d let us borrow them,” Lisa persisted.

“Don’t go harassing my clients,” Miranda growled as she put a couple of sandwiches on her plate.

“Well could you at least, like, mention in passing that we want to do this? You can give them my number if they might be willing.”

“You really, really want to do this, don’t you.” Miranda assessed Lisa’s eager face and knew already she wasn’t going to ignore this one. On an exasperated sigh, she caved. “Fine. I’ll mention it. But don’t expect anything. You don’t pay me enough to make it worth losing clients over.”

“We don’t pay you anything,” Gene said oh-so-reasonably.

“Exactly.”

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