copyright Would it be copyright to include my OC in a music video?

[RedWire 31]

Hey guys. I was planning on making a music video for a song im working on. I was wondering, if I'm using my own art style, the only thing connecting it to mlp is the fact that the characters are ponies, they are all my ocs, and I'm not selling it or anything, would it still be copyright infringement, and am I at risk of getting struck down by Hasbro? Also, what if I copyright my song, but not the video? Does that increase the chance of getting struck?

Edited August 4, 2020 by RedWire

[MidnightFire1222 1,682]

I see people doing this with art all the time on youtube. I doubt you'll get any copyright strikes. I guess as long as you credit the fact that MLP itself belongs to Hasbro somewhere in the video or description, it should be fine.

Edited August 3, 2020 by MidnightFire1222

[RedWire 31]

1 hour ago, MidnightFire1222 said:

I see people doing this with art all the time on youtube. I doubt you'll get any copyright strikes. I guess as long as you credit the fact that MLP itself belongs to Hasbro somewhere in the video or description, it should be fine.

Thank you 😊!

[SasQ 1,355]

Disclaimer:  I'm not a lawyer. If you look for actual legal advice, I'm afraid you have to ask an actual lawyer. But here's how I see it, according to what I know about how copyright laws work.

Copyright law is, as the name suggests, a law that deals with the right to make copies of some artistic works. It is a form of temporary[1] monopoly granted by the state to the copyright owner so that only him/her would be allowed to make and sell copies of his work on the market without somebody else being allowed[2] to do the same and compete with him/her for their customers' money.

  [1] Although calling something "temporary" when it can last 150 years or more is ridiculous if you ask me :q
  [2] Being allowed is not the same as being able, though.

This law was supposedly introduced to be a motivation for people creating more art, because apparently according to governments people don't create stuff if they aren't paid for and when their works are not protected by the state, and they lose when someone is creating too \_(ツ)_/

But they also introduced the possibility of selling your rights to copying to other people, usually some publishers, so that they could make money on selling copies of your works, then share some % of their profits with you, the original author. So originally it was rather a law for protecting publishers' businesses from failing, and for governments to be able to decide whom to grant this temporary monopoly and whom not. It was never about the artists. But I digress, so let's get back to ponies.

Copyright law does not apply to IDEAS. It applies to WORKS, that is, ideas put on paper, musics recorded on some medium, movie films etc. The reason is: you can't have monopoly on IDEAS, because that would mean disabling other people from having those ideas in their mind, which  is absurd. Copyright law only applies to COPIES of something that has been already created as a piece of art.

Now, when you make a drawing of a pony that is only similar to someone else's, you're not infringing any copyrights in my opinion, as long as you don't use any frames from the original show which is copyrighted to Hasbro, or that they established on any physical medium. Simply put, you're not copying any of their works, you're making your own artwork that is just similar to theirs, or "in their style". But style is not copyrighted. If you sing your own song "in the style of Adele" (if you can), Adele has nothing to do with it. You're not making copies of any of Adele's original songs that she established on any physical medium. Same here: it's your own OCs (which stands for ORIGINAL character), then your work is original (in a sense that you didn't use any piece of art taken from Hasbro's videos or products, so they should have no rights to your original work. If they could, that would lead to a lot of dangerous absurdities.

Unfortunately, copyright law already is being abused that way, to eradicate competition and silence people, and already leads to such absurdities, which is quite frequent. Unfortunately, it's the Golden Rule all over again: whoever has the gold, makes the rules. If Hasbro wanted to go against you, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't care much about what the law says, but how their lawyers could stop you from doing what you do. And if you don't have a good lawyer to protect you, you're screwed anyway :q  Life sucks, laws are not made for you :q

Personally I would go even further with it, by saying that if you used one of Hasbro's characters from the show, but draw it all by yourself, making sure that it doesn't look exactly like any of the frames from the show (which might be very hard to do with a character from the show – you would have to avoid any pose they might have possibly used in the show), then Hasbro should have no claim on your artwork, because you didn't copy any of their media. If anything, you're making a derivative work, which – curiously enough – is protected by copyright law too, but this time it is you who's being protected too! :q That's right, your derived work is still your work, and copyright law protects it from being copied and sold[3] by other people, including Hasbro! The problem with derived works, however, is that this right is a dependent one: you can't sell copies of your derived work without permission of the original author / copyright owner. But! – neither can the original copyright owner (Hasbro)! :q  You two are basically in a stallmate unless working out some agreement together. Nevertheless, I mention about this to make it clear that whatever you create, it is automatically protected by copyright law as well, even if it is based on someone else's work, because many people seem to forget / deliberately omit this important detail (most likely because it changes the way copyright law is perceived, to their own benefit). It's just that if your work is a derived work, your ability to use your rights might be limited.

  [3] I deliberately wrote "copied and sold", not just "copied", because copyright law doesn't really disallow making copies. If it were, that would be another absurd and a dead law, because there's no possible way someone could stop you from making a copy for yourself, let alone knowing about it, if you do it in private. It's more about selling this copies in public, because that's what messes up with the business of the original copyright owner. Copyright law is a monopoly, but it is not an absolute one. It doesn't grant the copyright owner absolute power on you. There are things that they can't forbid you from doing with their works. There's a lot of exceptions from this monopoly, falling under the name of fair use. And it's actually made this way on purpose, to make sure that copyright law won't be counter-productive to culture and won't do more than it should. (Unfortunately, media corporations and publishers bust their balls to make sure that people won't see it that way; they'll rather have them believe that publishers have unlimited power over them.)

Unfortunately, there's more than just copyright that they can use against you. Another one is trademark law. And that's most likely what they would go with in this case – because they trademarked the names of all their characters. If you used one of those names in your work, they'll say that you infringed their trademark. Similarly if their logo appeared in your video, or one of the characters referred to any of the copyrighted names or to the MLP franchise. They can even argue that you are trying to make your ponies similar to the ponies from their show to convince people that it is their brand and misrepresent it, which is also part of trademark law. That's why they'll more likely go with trademark law than copyright law in this case, because it allows for more elasticity if you didn't copied any of their works directly.

12 hours ago, MidnightFire1222 said:

I see people doing this with art all the time on youtube. I doubt you'll get any copyright strikes.

This means nothing, because Hasbro could simply let them be, seeing them as not a threat to their business, or they didn't find those videos yet. They can as well wait for the piggy to grow bigger before slaughtering it to be able to extort more damage money.

12 hours ago, MidnightFire1222 said:

I guess as long as you credit the fact that MLP itself belongs to Hasbro somewhere in the video or description, it should be fine.

I don't think so. That actually might make things worse, because it's like acknowledging their trademarks and admitting that there might be something in your video that might be a copy of some of their works before they even got the chance of proving it to you in court. It's a legal suicide. It makes your case closed before it even opens.

Edited August 4, 2020 by SasQ

[Splashee 28,537]

14 hours ago, RedWire said:

Hey guys. I was planning on making a music video for a song im working on. I was wondering, if I'm using my own art style, the only thing connecting it to mlp is the fact that the characters are ponies, they are all my ocs, and I'm not selling it or anything, would it still be copyright infringement, and am I at risk of getting struck down by Hasbro? Also, what if I copyright my song, but not the video? Does that increase the chance of getting struck?

If it is all yours, it will be your content.

Remember to put you © text in there at the end, and in the description.

If I took one of the real life ponies outside on the field, painted it pink, put a tattoo on the flank, then uploaded it to YouTube, would Hasbro Copyright Infringement me? Of course not. Copyright Infringement means you are stealing soneone elses copyrighted work.

If you use the word My Little Pony, you will get in trouble, but for trademark reasons.

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

If it’s in your own style, then Hasbro probably won’t come after you 

[RedWire 31]

3 hours ago, Splashee® said:

If it is all yours, it will be your content.

Remember to put you © text in there at the end, and in the description.

If I took one of the real life ponies outside on the field, painted it pink, put a tattoo on the flank, then uploaded it to YouTube, would Hasbro Copyright Infringement me? Of course not. Copyright Infringement means you are stealing soneone elses copyrighted work.

If you use the word My Little Pony, you will get in trouble, but for trademark reasons.

Thank you.

3 hours ago, ExplosionMare said:

If it’s in your own style, then Hasbro probably won’t come after you 

Thanks.

[SasQ 1,355]

3 hours ago, Splashee® said:

Remember to put you © text in there at the end, and in the description.

Although it wouldn't hurt, putting the © mark is no longer necessary and it doesn't make any change. It is a relic of the old copyright law that required you to register your copyrights in the Copyright Office if you wanted your works to be protected by it, and you were required to put those © marks to inform people that your copyrights have been registered in that office. But nowadays, it is no longer necessary nor required, because according to the current version of copyright law, you have your rights to your work by default, from the moment of establishing it on any physical medium or in any physical form.

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

1 hour ago, RedWire said:

Thank you.

Thanks.

You’re welcome  

[Splashee 28,537]

6 hours ago, SasQ said:

Although it wouldn't hurt, putting the © mark is no longer necessary and it doesn't make any change. It is a relic of the old copyright law that required you to register your copyrights in the Copyright Office if you wanted your works to be protected by it, and you were required to put those © marks to inform people that your copyrights have been registered in that office. But nowadays, it is no longer necessary nor required, because according to the current version of copyright law, you have your rights to your work by default, from the moment of establishing it on any physical medium or in any physical form.

If you can prove you did it at the intended, non specified time

If someone takes your work and put their © text with year on it, like

Copyright © 2020 Splashee. All Rights Reserved.

And you try to prove you did it first, but your work has no written copyright, you will lose. You just have to hope no one steals your work and claim © to it, and let me tell you by experience, I made a font in 1999, that directly got stolen, had it's copyright text removed, and has today appeared on t-shirts and in magazines... And I cannot do much about it. That was with copyright protection in form of text, that was illegally removed. Internet steals anything worth stealing. Find a way to protect your work, or don't do anything worth stealing.

And on YouTube, your own video will make 10000 hits, but not on your own channel. At least a © watermark in your video can give a little comfort 

[RedWire 31]

On 8/4/2020 at 4:51 AM, SasQ said:

Disclaimer:  I'm not a lawyer. If you look for actual legal advice, I'm afraid you have to ask an actual lawyer. But here's how I see it, according to what I know about how copyright laws work.

Copyright law is, as the name suggests, a law that deals with the right to make copies of some artistic works. It is a form of temporary[1] monopoly granted by the state to the copyright owner so that only him/her would be allowed to make and sell copies of his work on the market without somebody else being allowed[2] to do the same and compete with him/her for their customers' money.

  [1] Although calling something "temporary" when it can last 150 years or more is ridiculous if you ask me :q
  [2] Being allowed is not the same as being able, though.

This law was supposedly introduced to be a motivation for people creating more art, because apparently according to governments people don't create stuff if they aren't paid for and when their works are not protected by the state, and they lose when someone is creating too \_(ツ)_/

But they also introduced the possibility of selling your rights to copying to other people, usually some publishers, so that they could make money on selling copies of your works, then share some % of their profits with you, the original author. So originally it was rather a law for protecting publishers' businesses from failing, and for governments to be able to decide whom to grant this temporary monopoly and whom not. It was never about the artists. But I digress, so let's get back to ponies.

Copyright law does not apply to IDEAS. It applies to WORKS, that is, ideas put on paper, musics recorded on some medium, movie films etc. The reason is: you can't have monopoly on IDEAS, because that would mean disabling other people from having those ideas in their mind, which  is absurd. Copyright law only applies to COPIES of something that has been already created as a piece of art.

Now, when you make a drawing of a pony that is only similar to someone else's, you're not infringing any copyrights in my opinion, as long as you don't use any frames from the original show which is copyrighted to Hasbro, or that they established on any physical medium. Simply put, you're not copying any of their works, you're making your own artwork that is just similar to theirs, or "in their style". But style is not copyrighted. If you sing your own song "in the style of Adele" (if you can), Adele has nothing to do with it. You're not making copies of any of Adele's original songs that she established on any physical medium. Same here: it's your own OCs (which stands for ORIGINAL character), then your work is original (in a sense that you didn't use any piece of art taken from Hasbro's videos or products, so they should have no rights to your original work. If they could, that would lead to a lot of dangerous absurdities.

Unfortunately, copyright law already is being abused that way, to eradicate competition and silence people, and already leads to such absurdities, which is quite frequent. Unfortunately, it's the Golden Rule all over again: whoever has the gold, makes the rules. If Hasbro wanted to go against you, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't care much about what the law says, but how their lawyers could stop you from doing what you do. And if you don't have a good lawyer to protect you, you're screwed anyway :q  Life sucks, laws are not made for you :q

Personally I would go even further with it, by saying that if you used one of Hasbro's characters from the show, but draw it all by yourself, making sure that it doesn't look exactly like any of the frames from the show (which might be very hard to do with a character from the show – you would have to avoid any pose they might have possibly used in the show), then Hasbro should have no claim on your artwork, because you didn't copy any of their media. If anything, you're making a derivative work, which – curiously enough – is protected by copyright law too, but this time it is you who's being protected too! :q That's right, your derived work is still your work, and copyright law protects it from being copied and sold[3] by other people, including Hasbro! The problem with derived works, however, is that this right is a dependent one: you can't sell copies of your derived work without permission of the original author / copyright owner. But! – neither can the original copyright owner (Hasbro)! :q  You two are basically in a stallmate unless working out some agreement together. Nevertheless, I mention about this to make it clear that whatever you create, it is automatically protected by copyright law as well, even if it is based on someone else's work, because many people seem to forget / deliberately omit this important detail (most likely because it changes the way copyright law is perceived, to their own benefit). It's just that if your work is a derived work, your ability to use your rights might be limited.

  [3] I deliberately wrote "copied and sold", not just "copied", because copyright law doesn't really disallow making copies. If it were, that would be another absurd and a dead law, because there's no possible way someone could stop you from making a copy for yourself, let alone knowing about it, if you do it in private. It's more about selling this copies in public, because that's what messes up with the business of the original copyright owner. Copyright law is a monopoly, but it is not an absolute one. It doesn't grant the copyright owner absolute power on you. There are things that they can't forbid you from doing with their works. There's a lot of exceptions from this monopoly, falling under the name of fair use. And it's actually made this way on purpose, to make sure that copyright law won't be counter-productive to culture and won't do more than it should. (Unfortunately, media corporations and publishers bust their balls to make sure that people won't see it that way; they'll rather have them believe that publishers have unlimited power over them.)

Unfortunately, there's more than just copyright that they can use against you. Another one is trademark law. And that's most likely what they would go with in this case – because they trademarked the names of all their characters. If you used one of those names in your work, they'll say that you infringed their trademark. Similarly if their logo appeared in your video, or one of the characters referred to any of the copyrighted names or to the MLP franchise. They can even argue that you are trying to make your ponies similar to the ponies from their show to convince people that it is their brand and misrepresent it, which is also part of trademark law. That's why they'll more likely go with trademark law than copyright law in this case, because it allows for more elasticity if you didn't copied any of their works directly.

This means nothing, because Hasbro could simply let them be, seeing them as not a threat to their business, or they didn't find those videos yet. They can as well wait for the piggy to grow bigger before slaughtering it to be able to extort more damage money.

I don't think so. That actually might make things worse, because it's like acknowledging their trademarks and admitting that there might be something in your video that might be a copy of some of their works before they even got the chance of proving it to you in court. It's a legal suicide. It makes your case closed before it even opens.

Thank you for this. I was never planning on mentioning mlp, using characters from it, or any other indication that it came with it except that the ocs are ponies. And even then, they'll be drawn in my art style, so the style will differ from Hasbro's. Thank you very much for your in depth input.