Rights & Authorization
If you want to use music, visuals, videos, written texts and various original works to illustrate or decorate your Intranet or Internet sites, then
SESAM:
- is your partner, answering questions on copyright and authors' rights in multimedia
- offers you a way of managing rights designed to suit multimedia uses of original works.
These works belong to their authors and you are not free to use them on your Web Site, even if no charge is made, i.e. receiving no payment, no matter how long or short the excerpt used, unless prior authorization has been granted.
Most original composers and authors have a collective administration society or "society of authors" issuing licenses for them and collecting the rights due which are then paid to them. In France these societies have formed a group, SESAM, specifically for managing multimedia use of works (e.g. CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, Web sites and intranets).
The license issued by SESAM does not allow you to change the works you will use; the moral rights of the original authors are still fully reserved. Anyone wishing to change a work (by translating, adapting or arranging it) must have permission from the authors or their rights-holders and comply with the terms set down in agreement with them. And once you have SESAM licensing, you will also need authorization from other rights-holders for rights not managed by SESAM and which could be involved for the operation of your Web site (e.g. record producers for anyone using commercially produced CDs, or film producers for the use of films).
Once you have made sure that the use of works on your Web site is covered by SESAM, you then send the information required to SESAM for a license to be issued. The information is in separate paragraphs covering the type of use requested and includes details on the identity of the person lodging the request and the purpose of the Site being declared.
The declaration reporting the works illustrating your site or presented for preview listening or viewing will not be required when lodging the license request, but these documentary records needed to pay rights-holders (the author, composer, photographer, director or artist) of the works you use, will be requested later and on a regular basis once the license has been granted.
- Private individuals:
- Personal Web Pages: The initial focus is on your centers of interest; the site is not a display case for your business (e.g. professionals or tradesmen) or for any money-making activity.
- Presentation of Business: You are presenting a business or some other profit-making activity.
- Representatives of Sites for associations or groups:
- No revenue: mainly sites for associations, interest groups, foundations, local authorities, public bodies or offices not generating revenue through the site.
- With revenue: The site generates direct or indirect income (e.g. subscriptions, advertising, sponsorship and merchandising)
- Representatives of an institutional site
Presenting professional business and/or trade in goods and services