Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept which gives the original creator of the product the rights to it, meaning no one else can copy the product and put their name on it.
So before we could start planning our music video and using the song 'Stay Awake' by Example in our music video, we had to gain copyright permission from Examples record label, Ministry of Sound. We had to get this copyright permission to make sure our music video was legal, and to ensure Ministry of Sound that our music video was only going to be used for educational purposes. Also, if we didn't get copyright permission to use the song, it would be seen as infringement and you could possibly be sued for using the song in your own work without getting copyright permission from the right people. Therefore gaining copyright permission will make our music video fair and legal.

To gain the copyright permission we had to:

• Find out which record label Example is signed to, which we found out was Ministry of Sound.
• We then had to find out Ministry of Sounds contact information in order for us to either email or phone them with our request to use Examples song for our A Level media studies coursework, and also to assure them that if they gave us copyright permission we would give credit to the rightful track holder.

This is the email we sent to Ministry of Sound via their website in order to try and gain copyright permission:

Dear Copyright Holder,

We are A-Level students and we are writing to request your permission to use one of the latest tracks by Example. The track we wish to use is Stay Awake.

With your permission, this task would be used in our current A-Level Media Studies project, which involves creating a music video to a popular music track, as well as producing an album and a magazine advert for the artist.

If we received your permission, this track would ONLY be used in an educational context and be viewed by our media class, our teacher and the OCR exam board moderator. It would not be realised to a large audience.

The artist and your company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Carrie Dwyer

Nicole Nancholas

Georgia Wetherill