In the new era of visuals, when consumers “love with their eyes,” media and bloggers all work to capture their audience using any means accessible. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to generate original content.

The new Intellectual Environment report is dedicated to the issue of why you shouldn’t use other people’s content in your videos, even if it does not seem to belong to anyone. Materials were prepared by Elena Berger and Vladislav Scherbatykh, specialists of the Intellectual Property practice at Capital Legal Services.

Ninu, Inc., a US company and owner of NIMIA, an archives and rights management system for producers, directors, cinematographers and professional videographersб filed a lawsuit against Channel One Russia (details in Russian here). The reason for the lawsuit is that Channel One Russia in one of its programs used video material about Norway’s nature, without obtaining permission from the owners. It would seem the risk of any claims from the owners is negligible, since the video authors are from another country and were unlikely to see Channel One’s program and find out that their video content was used.

At the same time, a lawsuit was filed, and the situation demonstrates once again that intellectual property is not something to be ignored. First, you need to keep in mind that any work (a video, photo or text), as a rule, has an owner. There are very few exceptions to this rule, especially for works created in the last 70 years. Only the owner can decide whether to allow others to use their work or not, and, in case of a violation, they can request a ban on use of the work and recover compensation through court.

Second, you cannot presume that the owner is unable to discover a violation because they, for example, live in another country and are not likely to see your content where you used their work. As with the Channel One case, the owner could be represented by a company specially involved in rights management, who has all the tools and experience to find unlawful use anywhere in the world and to bring a lawsuit.

That is why if you are looking for risk-free use of someone else’s work, it is important to find the owner and obtain their permission. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if the owner, having learned of a violation, files a lawsuit and recovers compensation.

Is it possible to make do without the owner’s consent? The law of course does have such exceptions, but they, however, entail a number of conditions to be observed.

For example, the law says that you can quote other works without permission. At the same time, in order for the quoting to be legal, you need, first, to cite the author of the work, and second, the quoting must be justified by its purpose. As you can see, the criteria for lawfulness of quoting are rather vague, and it is often difficult to abide by them. That is why in disputable situations we recommend not taking any risks and obtaining the owner’s permission. We examined similar cases in greater detail in the review of the BadComedian case.