Copyright question about displaying short excerpts from a documentary online?

Legal: Would that fall in the category of fair use?
The guidelines include:
The nature of the use. (Commercial vs. Non profit educational?)
The nature of the material (whatever that means).
Amount / size copied
The effect on the market. (Does it impact the documentary makers).

Sounds like legally it could go either way.

Moral: Kind of up to you.
I do things like copy lyrics or chords for one time use during a performance (not for profit). That’s probably not legal, but I don’t find it immoral.

@Grisson

Yep, that was down my line of thinking. Certainly no commercial aspect there. I don’t know if illustrating to my fellow Flutherites how sheepish a certain look in a face was could be considered “educational”, but I really don’t see any commercial interests threatened.

Come to think of it, that would actually promote the piece, I mean, a 2 minute video is a teaser, really.

It seems to fit all aspects of fair use. Then again, just because it seems to fit doesn’t mean you can’t be sued for it, so what it really boils down to is, are you willing to take the risk that someone with the documentary finds your video clip and decides to take action?

Let’s consider putting it onto YouTube, and also consider that you don’t then upload the entire documentary in small chunks. You then share the link and your video gains a few hundred hits, even thousands, but no more than say 5000 hits within a few weeks of posting it. If someone with the rights to the documentary finds your clip and chooses to take it down, they would file this Copyright Infringement Notice. It would then likely be taken down. It’s highly doubtful, but not impossible, that the documentary right owners would continue to take actions to gain compensation for your (no offense) puny short video. I believe the DMCA filer will gain your first and last name and email address which you entered while registering, possibly your IP address too. So, theoretically, if you provided false information when logging in, and used a proxy all the time, you would be unidentifiable without a lot of further effort (contacting your ISP if they can trace it back that far, getting a warrant for the information if the ISP asks for it, et cetera). Given the sheer number of videos out there, and the time and effort required in fully pursuing such an action, I would consider uploading a 2–3 minute segment of a documentary to a false-information YouTube account to be a relatively risk-free activity, and well in the ethical bounds for furthering an intellectual discussion amongst peers.

It is respectable to believe that your action is more promotional than infringing. I also believe this, and fully believe that sampling such media encourages the purchasing of the media. However, when it comes to copyright infringement, such thoughts have no bearing on the fact that you willingly distributed copyrighted material to which you did not have the rights to do so. If, like me, you believe that the laws should be changed to allow for such legitimate uses, then we need to petition our lawmakers.

@dynamicduo

Hum… I guess ya’ll will have to do with me describing the look on the guys face then :)

Thanks, great answer!