Professional / Legal guidelines of taking video footage of games or screenshots

[falen]

I have an upcoming school project on Digital Literacy. I am doing my project on video games and I was wondering if anyone knew what the legal and or professional parameters were for using screen shots of video footage. I know the TRS game reviews often have video footage playing in the background, did this require a special license to display? Or is anyone free to take and use game footage or screen shots.

[tokenuser]

Varies by country, but in the US you would be OK since it would fall under the "fair use" provisions for education.

[falen]

Yeah I'm in Canada and there is no "fair use" for education clause which is why I am curious about it.

[tokenuser]

Yeah I'm in Canada and there is no "fair use" for education clause which is why I am curious about it.Canada (and Australia - which is my home, despite now living in the US), have a similar concept called "fair dealing". It actually goes beyond the concept of copyright law, but in this particular context it is very similar to the US notion of "fair use" in as much as it covers the use of copyright material for "research and private study."

Now, you can't go and copy the games and distribute them under the guise of "research" but you could show screencaps in the context of an academic work without any problems.

[vegan]

What do you think is going to happen? The police is going to burst in on your school presentation?

[falen]

Part of the guidelines for the project is that if I break copyright law I fail, so no the police won't break in but it wont be good.

[tsmith15]

If you only use promotional screens and gameplay trailers I'm pretty sure you're okay.