November 2006 Archives

These last few months have been very exciting and thought provoking. After working on many interesting and challenging problems to create an ecosystem of content, software and consumer electronics at DivX, I decided it was time to take a break. I have had a fantastic time working with some great folks on the underlying technology that powers a video on demand service in Italy, a whole new digital home platform named DivX Connected that is designed for portability and low cost embedded devices and building an architectural foundation to enhance productivity and maintainability for the company as a whole. It was a great experience and I would like to thank Jordan Greenhall for his trust in me and the opportunity to contribute to DivX.

I wanted to spend some time at home with the family. Doing this has been one of the best things I could have done. It clearly has created a much closer bond with my daughter and I have been able to catch some key accomplishments of her. It was uncertain for me as to how long I would be spending at home, but as soon as people found out I was spending time at home, I got a lot of inquiries, proposals and offers for new positions all around the world. The time off also allowed me to catch up with a lot of friends and old co-workers which was very needed as well.

There were a lot of events, such as DivX going public on NASDAQ and the Google/Youtube deal, that brought even more inquiries about when or if I would join another company again or if I would be interested in joining the founding team of some media startup, etc. All this buzz, did get me thinking about what I was going to do when I wanted to join the work force again. I contemplated on starting something on my own and spend a few years doing research. All of this opened a lot of doors and gave me an opportunity to keep my brain thinking about the online media space while spending time at home with the family.

After dozens of discussions with some outstanding teams and organizations, I decided to take on a Director of Operations role at a stealth media startup created by proven entrepreneurs who had put together a world class team of whom a few I had already worked with at previous companies or met through my involvement with Open Source. So, far I am really liking what I am seeing and applaud all the effort of the team that has put together what exists right now. It is truly amazing that this got put together in couple of months.

The company has been very quiet, although, recently has started to come more out of hiding and has said we can now talk more publicly about our jobs and the company we work for. Right now, the organization is publicly known as The Venice Project, but it will be re-branded at some point in the future when we are out of beta. If you are interested in what we are doing check out the company blog or sign up for a beta test account.

So, here starts another chapter in life. As I have come to realize, change teaches you a lot of things about what you had and what you have been missing out on. I am looking forward to learning more about both.

An old co-worker of mine, Brian Dear, points us to an old blade runner documentary "On the Edge of 'Blade Runner'" created in 2000 for British television that has recently appeared on Google Video. It is worth a look if you have never seen it.

I have had little chance to expose myself to the latest new tracks, so I will simply focus on the tracks that are currently in heavy rotation at the house. As you can see, most of these tracks are almost a year old if not older. Regardless, I have gotten to really like these tracks and hope you get a kick out of them.

• Body Language [Original Mix] - M.A.N.D.Y., Booka Shade (Get Physical 2005)
• Lola's Theme [Alternative Mix] - Shapeshifters (Nocturnal Groove 2004)
• Seven Hours [Martinez Apocalypse Now Mix] - D-Nox (Electribe 2005)
• The Other Side [Deep Dish Other Than This Side Remix] - Paul van Dyk (Vandit 2005)
• The Careless Kind [Naum Gabo Remix] - Infusion (Polaroid 2005)

Since I am not spinning vinyl at the moment, because I have been told to keep the bass to a minimum by the ladies. I have been getting some tracks from BeatPort with great success. It is not quite Bleep, but it has a much wider selection of tracks. It is good to see that getting tracks online is something that is actually possible now, although I find many of them lack the vinyl intros and outros.

As you may know, we listen to a lot of music at home. Every once in a while, we find our 10 month old daughter, Jasmine, bobbing her head to a particular track. We noticed her interest in certain songs even when she was in the womb. For example, "Say Hello" by Deep Dish (Positiva) featuring vocals by Anousheh Khalili. She started kicking to the rhythm of the track before she was even born and, till this day, the track calms her every time we play it.

In the last few weeks we noticed that Jasmine dances every time we play "Hear My Name" by Armand Van Helden (Southern Fried). She shakes her shoulder, waves her hands and occassionally lifts her butt in the air to the beat. It is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time. She smiles the whole time she is doing this.

It was one of those moments that I felt had to be shared with the rest of the family and therefore the easiest thing to do would be to video tape her dancing and post it on her site. However, this got me thinking.

How do I post such a video clip legally?

First thing first, I would have to have our baby daughter sign a contract saying that she approves of the taping and publishing of her dancing. I'd have to negotiate some royalty payment to her, but maybe we can do that based on us providing her with our college savings funds. Or we can just cover part of her rent.

Now, what about the background music that she is dancing to? Should I contact the label and tell them that I would be more then willing to pay 50 dollars for the life time of the video for licensing the track and the right to redistribute it as part of this clip. Do I contact ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or the Harry Fox Agency? There is a pretty good Licensing 101 page on the SoundExchange website. They have a question that talks to almost exactly what we need.

I'm going to videotape a public performance where there may be some background music used for the performance. Do I need to obtain a license for any such music? If so, what kind of license(s) do I need and where can I get them? Does it matter what I plan to do with the tape (e.g., sell it, stream it on the Internet, perform it in a public venue)?

It is in fact necessary to secure more than one license in order to videotape a performance that includes background music (unless, of course, the background music is deleted from the videotape). For more information, please go to FAQ

I looked at the FAQ, but I could not find anything related to licensing music that is being played in the background during a performance.

They have another question that answers what is needed to license music for a video soundtrack. It is the closest thing I found.

I'm making a video and want to create a sound track for the video using popular music. Do I have to obtain permission from anyone to use the music in my video? If so, from whom do I get it and how do I go about getting the permissions?

In order to use commercially released musical recordings in a video, a variety of licenses (detailed below) are required. However, SoundExchange is not in a position to grant any of the licenses you will need.

Every musical recording embodies two distinct copyrighted works. The first is the underlying musical composition, comprised of the written notes and lyrics (for purposes of copyright law, the musical composition is referred to as a "musical work"). The copyright in the musical work is usually owned by the songwriter and/or his or her music publisher. The second copyrighted work is the actual recording itself - the sounds, including the recording artist’s interpretation of the musical composition, and the creative efforts of the producer, sound engineers and background musicians. (This is referred to in copyright law as a "sound recording.") The copyrighted recording brings to life the written notes and lyrics of the musical work. The copyright in the sound recording is typically owned by a record label.

The two copyrighted works described above are subject to a variety of separate rights (e.g., reproduction, distribution, performance), each of which must be licensed separately and must be licensed from separate entities. In order to obtain permission to use a commercially released musical recording in a video, you must obtain the following licenses:

1. For each individual musical composition you will be using, you must obtain a synchronization license from the songwriter and/or his or her music publisher. Publisher contact information can be obtained from ASCAP, BMI, or the U.S. Copyright Office. It is possible that some of the older musical compositions you plan to use are in the public domain (i.e., their copyright has expired), but determining the public domain status of a given musical work gets rather complicated. If you think the musical work you wish to use is in the public domain, we recommend that you review this issue either with a copyright attorney, the individual music publishers or someone at the Harry Fox Agency.
2. For each individual sound recording you will be using, you must also obtain a master use license from the individual record label that owns such sound recording. The name of the relevant record company can usually be determined from the liner notes that accompany the commercially-released version of the music. To assist you in this process, a list of licensing contacts at the major labels is attached to this note. Each of the labels will set their own fees based on a variety of factors (e.g., how popular the song is or was, how current the song is, the type of video project, the number of copies that will be made, etc.) Because the labels receive numerous licensing requests, it generally takes some time for these licenses to be granted. Please be aware that labels are not required to license their recordings for use in video projects.
3. In order to publicly perform the music in the finished video, you (or the venue where the video is shown) must also obtain a public performance license from the relevant performance rights organization(s) (i.e., ASCAP, BMI and/or SESAC). Each of these organizations represents a separate roster of individual songwriters and music publishers and offers a license to perform all of the musical compositions in its catalog. Further information about these organizations can be found at their respective web sites (www.ascap.com, www.bmi.com, www.sesac.com). No public performance license is required with respect to the sound recording.

What about our family members and friends that live overseas? Do I need to pay licensing costs for each of those countries as well? This is starting to become quite an ordeal for a simple home video clip. Even so, it is possible I will never be granted an international license. It is possible that the rights holders do not want my video to be associated with their music. I guess that is fair, but it certainly is a complicated and very time consuming process. Do I really need to do all this for a home video of a little girl dancing? It seems like I should be able to go to a single place where I can give them a reasonable payment and be done with it.

Maybe startups such as RoyaltyShare could help out. Although, this is just a video where the primary motive is to show our little girl dance. It is not some multi-million dollar production that can afford to spend a few months tracking down the right people for licensing.

It seems to me that during the days of VHS, people made videos of their children and weddings with little concern for the music playing in the background. I guess it was assumed that the video was for private use and it would be distributed to a limited audience and therefore was considered "fair use".

Now that the video is digital and distributed electronically over the internet, suddenly it is no longer considered "fair use". Is it because of the potential wider audience and the ease of distribution? Or maybe it was always done illegally, but there was little to no way of auditing this.

While I am spending all this time working out the rights to be able to distribute this video to friends from my website. It seems that I might as well find every decal and branded item that I find through out my personal video and see if I can get some spot advertising deal. Maybe I can get enough advertising revenue to cover the licensing costs?

It is sure is an interesting and detail oriented world we live in.