ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the issues involved in using existing footage (film, video or audio tape) which has been recorded by a third party. Material such as this is often referred to as bought-in footage, or simply as footage. Under the 1988 Copyright Act films, sound recordings, broadcasts and cable transmissions are all protected by copyright, separately and independently from any copyright protection of their contents. Following EU copyright harmonization, protection runs for a period of 70 years from the end of the year in which the film was first released, or made (in the case of an unreleased film or sound recording). A broadcast or cable programme is protected for a period of 70 years from the end of the year of first transmission. The EU has changed the copyright position of films and television and radio programmes to bring their level of protection into line with that of other copyright works. Film brings with it the probability of having been created by the effort of several ‘authors’ (a term which includes the script writer, the director, the producer and the camera person) and copyright has been extended to run for 70 years after the death of the longest lived of those authors. Therefore a film made in the 1920s, which had gone out of copyright, has now come back into copyright and that right will persist into the twenty-first century.
