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
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
How to improve SEO in two cities at once
Hi, we have a company, and the business has a Google My Business and business citations created. the manager, wants to be on first page of Google, in the organic results, for another city thats less than 10 miles away. the business does not have two stores, just one business premises, any idea how we can improve the local/organic SEO for the second city and get on the first page of Google there as well?
Local SEO | | sarahwalsh0 -
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 -
How can I make a compelling financial forecast on how SEO will bring tangible value?
Hi all, I am currently doing keywords research and matching it to our sales data. With an input of resources, do you know if there is a good way to create a growth forecast as a result of SEO investment? How do I work out a strategy and align it to a compelling financial forecast? Your experience on this will be super helpful! Many thanks, Eric
Local SEO | | Eric_S1 -
Is dynamic keyword insertion a viable local SEO tactic/strategy for your content?
Hi mozzers, I have a meeting tomorrow with the dev team to discuss about dynamic keyword insertion implementation on a new site. This site currently holds 40 geo specific microsites with several service pages each carrying unique content. These pages(about 400 pages) are seen by VP of marketing as hard to maintain and inconvenient when wanting to change content across these pages. The VP is looking to automate content as much as possible without hurting our local SEO efforts. The dev team will be asking me if dynamic keyword insertion could a viable strategy for these 40 locations without harming local SEO. Currently we have a robust local SEO strategy in place and wouldn't want to change it unless dynamic keyword insertion is a viable option and won't hurt all the seo efforts that are in place? If this is not a viable solution, any recommendations on any other solutions we could use to satisfy the VP? If you have used DKI for your local SEO efforts, please share your thoughts and results that you have seen. Any real case scenario data/knowledge would be really helpful. Thank you!
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
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 -
Local SEO Best Practices for 2,000+ 'location' service area business
Hi Moz Community! We operate a business where we have a network of 2,000+ technicians around the country who help people repair their mobile phones. These techs do the fixing at the customer's location, making them service area businesses. Even after scouring all of the go-to places on local SEO, I'm struggling to find best practices for this type of situation - the fact that our techs are operating in service areas presents a number of challenges. The biggest one, it seems, is that inevitably service areas are going to overlap. When I talked to a Google rep on this he said this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed and we'd just have to test and find out. Other challenges include the fact that we cannot bulk upload the service areas of our techs, and we cannot bulk verify - meaning there is a ton of work to do at our scale. Any suggestions on where to go to find resources on this specific topic, or an example of someone doing this well we can model? Thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | JohnGroves1 -
Local Search Question re Bulk Upload Feed
What option is best for a Bulk Upload Feed? A. Should this be done in the same Google account where we run our Adwords campaign or B. Should we use our Google account that has the Google Webmaster access? Thank you
Local SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0