It’s no suprise that we have a class exercise where you try to boil a famous documentary film (often an Academy Award winning film) down to a 2 minute essence and post your cut to the class Vimeo account
Vimeo noticed that assignment too and they sent me this email
I politely wrote back and said: This is part of a class exercise, the videos are password protected and only seen in the classroom. This use is clearly covered under the doctrine of fair use.
They responded:
They do not support fair use. Period.
Short answer= you can use zero part of someone elses work.
Lesson: make sure you have the permission to use any and every part of the work in your piece, that is, make sure you have permission from the composer and the artist to use their song playing on the radio in the background.
Thanks to Vimeo for teaching me something I should have already known.
