Legalicy of videos used for local SEO
-
Hello,
A client of mine wants to use someone else's video (video of how to train your dog) in his pages for "dog training (His City)" The person who makes the how to train your dog videos sells DVDs and that's how he makes his money if that matters.
We want to make sure we're giving the proper credit and doing this OK. What do we need to keep in minds for legalities and respecting the author?
Thanks.
-
There have been several high profile law suits over theft of web content
-
Julie and EGOL,
Some excellent information, and useful for protecting my own stuff as I grow! My client's wife happens to be an attorney and she said exactly what both of you said.
Thanks.
-
There is a whole new industry growing of people who look for illegal use of photos, copy, videos etc. so that they can sue.
This is very true. I have gotten intellectual property consultations from multipe attorneys because people have been using my property in violation of copyright law. They would be glad to help me build a situation where I can start suing. Although I have not gone that route, I have been attacking infringers at scale, filing DMCA with Google, web hosts and Adsense. If you kill their SERP visibility, get them kicked off of hosts and their Adsense accounts turned off, they stop using your stuff. Once you get a system for submitting DMCA at scale it takes surprisingly little time - we complained against nearly 200 domains in 2016 - but you better know the difference between infringement and fair use.
-
I researched this for a former client (he quit me when he didn't like my answer) and the risk to using another's intellectual property is high.
If you publish, whether it's a book or a website, you must 1) create it yourself, 2) pay for it yourself or 3) have written permission from the author. Without that you are risking huge penalties if caught. There is a whole new industry growing of people who look for illegal use of photos, copy, videos etc. so that they can sue.
P.S. I'm not sad about losing that client.
-
You are completely right EGOL, in many ways. We will be very careful.
-
This is a legal question and I am not an attorney. So, what I write here is amateur kibitzing and personal opinion.
If I was the person who wanted to use the videos of another person, I would contact that person and ask for written permission. Proper permission will include who you are, why you want to use the videos, what domain you want to post the videos on, a sample of the page where they will be displayed, how long you want to use them and any other information that might influence the owner to say "yes" and especially any information that would influence the owner to say "no". Failure to do this can get you into serious legal trouble. If the owner of the videos has done all of the legal homework, your client could be sued for $150,000 for infringement - without the owner of the videos being required to demonstrate that the infringement has caused damage.
If the owner is making money from these videos, even if it isn't serious money, he/she will probably tell anyone who wants to use them how much money must be paid for a license fee or simply tell them "no".
Really, if your client has a website about dog training, he should be making his own videos. This is best practice because it showcases the client's work, builds credibility with people who want their dogs trained, and the videos can be perfectly customized to the clients business, style, personality and location.
But, if the client is intent on using the videos of another person, he/she should get advice from an attorney who is qualified in copyright law instead of from people in an SEO forum - I sure would not go to a legal forum for SEO advice From my experience, the cost of good legal advice is a lot less than most people fear and more valuable than most people imagine.
This is all of the information that I am able to provide on this matter. Hope your client finds something that works perfectly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
English pages given preference over local language
We recently launched a new design of our website and for SEO purposes we decided to have our website both in English and in Dutch. However, when I look at the rankings in MOZ for many of our keywords, it seems the English pages are being preferred over the Dutch ones. That never used to be the case when we had our website in the old design. It mainly is for pages that have an English keyword attached to them, but even then the Dutch page would just rank. I'm trying to figure out why English pages are being preferred now and whether that could actually damage our rankings, as search engines would prefer copy in the local language. An example is this page: https://www.bluebillywig.com/nl/html5-video-player/ for the keywords "HTML5 player" and "HTML5 video player".
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
Does popup ads affects SEO?
Hi, webmasters, As a part of Christmas, we have enabled some pop-up advertisement on our homepage. However, we are doing SEO for our services, and if there any SEO experts here, please share your view on my question. Reference of the website which im saying is https://www.cash4carremovalsydney.com.au/ However, if this affects SEO, tell me an alternate solution for this concern for promoting our Xmas offer for our cars removal services.
Local SEO | | AnuManish0 -
How to go about SEO when the content on all the pages is in a regional language (with its own script which is non-roman) but majority of searches are in the same language but roman script?
For example, the entire content is in an Indian language called Gujarati and the script is also Gujarati. However, when I did a keyword research, I found that majority of the searches are in Gujarati langugage by roman script e.g. "gujarati sahitya" meaning Gujarati literature. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Local SEO | | Tumul0 -
National and Local rankings differences
Hi Guys,
Local SEO | | nikaus
I am in Australia and have a client I am working with that ranks quite well for their main keywords.
The business is based in Sydney but delivers Australia wide. The issue is - their main keyword ranks no.1 nationally.
If I set google to any of the main cities and type
Outdoor Mirrors Perth
Outdoor Mirrors Melbourne
Outdoor Mirrors Sydney
My client comes up no.1 But if I leave the city off the end of the keyword and I'm anywhere but Sydney I do not rank well for Outdoor Mirrors. The address of the business is in Sydney hence the no.1 there, but we said in Places that we deliver australia wide. Does anybody know why we don't rank well without the city added to the keyword and a way to remedy this? Thanks Nik0 -
Does anyone have stats or know where I can find stats on searchers who use geolocated queries versus geomodified?
My client is a franchise business and they want their location landing pages to rank for every one of their 60 plus locations nationwide. They are performing extremely well for geomodified terms. The argument is that people rarely ever search using the city name. Are there stats to back up whether this claim is true, and if so, do you know where I can get a hold of such data (outside of searching in Keyword Planner... unless that's the answer!)
Local SEO | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Local Search - Google Mobile Results (Web&App)
Hi, I have a client with multiple locations. One of the locations manager is searching for branded and non-branded keywords on his mobile phone and not able to locate the business (within the parking lot of the location). Our ranking reports via a local search platform and manual checks indicate the location is actually ranking well. and we're seeing progress in GA. Has anyone deal with something like this before? This is a location that recently opened to the public. The concern is around mobile web and app results. I'm looking for some guidance around how to approach the situation. I'm sorry I cannot provide more details on the client.
Local SEO | | burnseo0 -
How to market web design and SEO company locally
Hello, I'm looking for easy (yah right, correct?) ways to market locally my web solutions company. I do web design, E-commerce web design, and I start informational and E-commerce companies for people starting at $1000/month - only new companies, later I'll do a little more E-commerce stuff. Looking for inexpensive, fairly easy ways to market locally. Thanks!
Local SEO | | BobGW0 -
SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages? If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?) Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign! Thanks
Local SEO | | EdwardoUK0