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Is it legal to post "end credits" of a movie to YouTube? This video provides a straightforward example of both what end credits are, and the action in question.

Obviously, it's a part of an original work which is protected by copyright, but one can tell this is not a creative part of work, only meta information.

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The information contained in the end credits probably isn't protected by copyright (which protects expressions of ideas, not ideas and facts themselves), instead it protects the particular way that those end credits are expressed. Hence, the background music and the font of the text and any other fideldy bits that go in there to interest the audience are protected by copyright. Something like five or ten people get paid good money to create that little bit of boring video.

Now, would you be sued over that? Maybe not. The various unions reping the people in the credits might get mad if they did. And, their damages case in court would be pretty unimpressive. But, they would technically probably have the legal right to sue for a copyright violation over the clip.

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  • So, removing the background music increases the expected lifetime of the video on youtube, right? Minus one item protected by copyright to report abuse for. – Val Petruchek Jan 13 '18 at 0:25
  • @ValPetruchek Probably, although it also probably greatly reduces the expected number of views, which is why it probably does deserve protection. – ohwilleke Jan 13 '18 at 2:23
  • If the end credits were embellished in some particularly funny way to give viewers a laugh, beyond the pure facts who did what related to the move, that could make it protected by copyright. – gnasher729 Jan 14 '18 at 17:57

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