Creative + business protection
Our round-up of excellent, accurate, and free legal resources every filmmaker should know about.
THIRD-PARTY RESOURCES
- Review US Copyright Office circulars to learn basics about US Copyright Law, including fair use
- Find millions of Smithsonian digital assets available for free from the Smithsonian Open Access Database
- Understand the different Creative Commons licenses
- Ready to register your film with the Copyright Office? Here’s the link – and don’t forget to watch the handy video tutorial
- Look to the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press for helpful information about the laws that govern filming at protests and rallies, the recording of phone calls and in-person conversations, and pre-publication review.
- Refer to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s guide to Protecting Your Data During a Protest for tips on protecting your digital devices., including cameras
- If you’re planning on using a song or musical composition in your project and need to secure a sync license, you’ll need to figure out who has the publishing rights to that piece of music – typically the music publisher(s)/songwriter(s)/composer(s)/lyricist(s). You can often find the relevant parties by searching these databases:
- Side note: It’s not uncommon for publishing rights to be split among multiple parties. And if you’ll be using a specific recording of the song or composition, remember that you’ll also need to secure a license for the master recording from the applicable record label and/or performer.
- Click here to learn the difference between a New York Corporation, LLC and Sole Proprietorship
- Click here for step-by-step instructions on forming an LLC in New York
- Search this database to learn if your company name is available in NY
* No attorney-client relationship has been created by your access to this website. This website does not provide legal advice and the Filmmakers Legal Clinic is not acting as your attorney.
