Political
Trend: Intellectual property
First and foremost, the must-to-be-talked aspect of Movie and video making industry is the copyrights. As the U.S is the biggest influence in the world specially in the area of an entertainment, the legal and political aspect of the industry is well-developed.
Copyright is a form of legal protection for creative works of many kinds. To be covered by copyright, a production must be exclusive, ensuring that it has not been significantly reproduced from any other source. It is easier for creators to distribute their works in variety of ways such as print, publish, perform, film or record literary, creative or musical content, and allow others to do the same thing as long as they own the intellectual property of the certain work, all the above mentioned will be protected under the law of copyright. And the initial founder of the work will always be able to benefit from the reproduction of his/her work with the law. Also, if the artists/people who want to produce work which is inspired by an existing-copy-righted-work, they will need to get permission from the producer and publish their work as “derivative work”. However, there are few exceptions for using copyrighted works under the name of fair use. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, Fair use is “A legal doctrine that protects freedom of expression by enabling unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain circumstances.” Section 107 of the Copyright Act lays out the legal basis for deciding whether something is permissible to use and defines those types of uses — such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education, and research — as examples of activities that may qualify as fair to use. Thus, the following four factors shall be considered to evaluate the fairness of the use:
- Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
- Nature of the copyrighted work.
- Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
- Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Trend: Taxation
Trend: Contract and Lease agreement