I Wasn’t on the Fence But I Was Kinda Surprised …

A funny thing happened along the path to make my first video (ever ).

See, I got to the “I wanna add a little music” part; you know – at the beginning and the end during the credits (my first round with Windows Movie maker has opened Pandoras box btw – LOVE it) … and it turns out that audio is a whole lot harder to find for free online than images.

I did find a site I’d sorta taken notice of awhile ago that has very affordable music clips as well as graphics and other cool stuff available to purchase direct from the creators. I’ll probably go back there and pick something as my ‘theme’.

(When I told my 15yo that I’m gonna have a jingle – she laughed – LOL)

I did get pointed to a site whose name would lead you to believe that their music is free, but when I read the fine print, their stuff is only free for personal family type work shared by email (for example) – and NO uploading to websites without paying an annual license fee.

Oop, that was the whole object of the exercise. Which is a shame ’cause I’d already picked something really cool and added it to my video.

(Needless to say I had to replace it with something else.)

But here’s where the surprise comes in.

Call me naive but I felt certain the person who sent me to that site couldn’t have known that the music doesn’t have a free license for use on websites – but when I PMed her about it – she “shrugged”.

Hmm…

Well, so I did what I felt was “the right thing” for my waiting video but at the same time I kinda questioned … “could this be one of those ‘it’s easier to beg forgiveness later’ kinda things?” – was I just being TOO straight laced?

The next day the answer came.

A loud and extremely clear message (okay it was a rant) from Larry Winget by way of Michel Fortin’s blog.

The upshot of it? (and I should have been able to be clear on this myself being an artist from birth – guess we all need reinforcement now and again, eh?) – it reinforced a simple truth…

The use of intellectual property without consent is stealing.

Doesn’t matter if you “haven’t had any issues with that yet”

That is still one of the 10 commandments, yeah?

Pretty sure
Andrea