Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If I appear in a video wearing a shirt with a copyrighted image on it, is that a violation?
What about if the artwork is being used as an illustration? For example, if I'm doing a video tutorial on painting, and use a painting someone else has done to illustrate a point, or as example of a particular method.
Yup, copyright statutes and case law cover these situations.
In Canada, look at at Copyright Act Section 30.7:
It is not an infringement of copyright to incidentally and not deliberately
(a) include a work or other subject-matter in another work or other subject-matter; or
(b) do any act in relation to a work or other subject-matter that is incidentally and not deliberately included in another work or other subject-matter.
The US doesn't have this in statute, but some defendants used a fair use defence, some successful, some not. (http://www.iposgoode.ca/2010/04/cindy-incidentally-the-incidental-inclusion-exception-in-canadian-copyright-law/)
If you're using a piece of art as part of a tutorial, or being illustrative of a point, or subject of commentary, review, or criticism, that may be fair use or fair dealing.
