# Is it legal or illegal to rescore a game/movie?



## constaneum (Jul 28, 2014)

I'm intending to rescore some of the game's CG scene for games like Final Fantasy for self education purpose. Self education in the sense of learning how to score a music to fit in the game's CG scenes. Will it be legal or illegal for me to do so in terms of rescoring the scene and publishing it on website like Youtube? It's a non-commercial thing though. Need some advice. Thanks !


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## RiffWraith (Jul 28, 2014)

Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in USA terms:

_ in terms of rescoring the scene _

Who is going to know, if you do this in the privacy of your own home?

_and publishing it on website _

Grey area, I think.

You can not take anyone's intellectual property, and publicly display it without their permission - unless what you are doing falls under fair use. If you rip a portion of a CD, and publicly display that section, asking "how to orchestrate strings such as these?" - you can make an argument that that falls under "education". Not sure that would hold up in a court, but you at least have a valid argument. "Hey - I am trying to learn something here."

If you take a scene from a game, re-score it, and publicly display it asking "how'd I do? Any suggestions on how to make the music better?" - one could argue that is education as well... but I say that would NOT hold up. I could be wrong... maybe MichaelL has a better idea?


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## The Darris (Jul 28, 2014)

When I rescored the opening credits to The Birds and posted that on my YT channel, I got hit with copy infringement. I had to acknowledge that I was using third-party content and then made the video unlisted. Unlisted videos are not subject (afaik) to any lawsuit or copyright issues on YT. 

In your case, the best scenario is to not post these publicly but social and privately share with trusted parties to get feedback if you are wanting it. If that is suitable for you then I would venture out and talk to film students and ask them for stock footage of their projects to help practice with. Also, I'm sure there are many license free film clips out there that you can snag and write to. Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Chris


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## G.E. (Jul 28, 2014)

I'm not really qualified to give legal advice, but generally speaking,nobody will bother to take you to court for that.What can happen is getting a "matched third party content" notice from youtube and if the rights holder wants,he can take down your video.

Since you mentioned video games,I can pretty much guarantee that you won't have any problems at all.People make a living by posting the entire game on youtube,with cutscenes included, and they never have any problems.If you add your own commentary or music,the general consensus is that it's considered a transformative work and qualifies as fair use.Though that has never been verified since it never went to court.Video game developers are generally okay with people posting footage of their games online.

If it's a movie or a TV show however,I'm pretty sure your video will be taken down immediately.


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## MA-Simon (Jul 28, 2014)

I don't think you will have problems with video game scenes.
There are millions of full lets plays on youtube. 

There are even supercuts like "the last of us the movie" etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkLPKd-Vs8g


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