: How does one determine how much of a song you can use without paying? In the movie, "The Perez Family," there was a scene that featured the band playing something like two lines of the song

In the movie, "The Perez Family," there was a scene that featured the band playing something like two lines of the song "I Will Survive" before there was a voice-over.

In my screenplay, I have the hero enter a karaoke contest singing "Girl From Ipahema," and if it were made into a movie, he'd be shown singing:

"Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each guy she passes goes aaah."

If a movie featured "all" of "nearly all" of these songs, the producers would have to pay royalties to the rights holders.

But what determines how much of an excerpt can they present without paying?

Are there any lawyers on the site that can cite "hard and fast" rules for this?

Or is it a "softer" process where you write to e.g. the William Morris Agency, and ask them how of much the song one can use without paying?

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@Miguel976

Zero seconds. If you can recognize the song - you pay.

The (non-existent) 30-second rule

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@Voss1744584

There is no line in the sand when it comes to fair use. It would be much simpler if there was and you could write rules to allow a computer to check, but is better that there is no hard line. Sometimes it is fair use to copy an entire work. Sometimes it is not fair use to copy a single letter. And just to make things complicated are recommended but unnecessary licences where an otherwise fair use is explicitly paid for, either to limit perceived liability or to just make people happy.

Here are some examples of whole work fair use copying: Strongs Concordance, The Annotated Alice, The Google Library Scanning Project.

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@Angela458

The problem is that I think it varies depending the country. I think that in the US and for a US distribute fil is around 20 seconds... I could be wrong

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: How does one determine how much of a song you can use without paying? In the movie, "The Perez Family," there was a scene that featured the band playing something like two lines of the song

More posts by @Welton431

: Adding to @Philipp 's answer: Know your plot and the consequences: If you describe the scene from POV of the victim, who provoked the action, you need a reason why she provoked it. If

: Children's Dialogue I'm having some trouble writing dialogue (and emotive responses) for children in the age bracket of roughly 10-13. They end up reading more like adults with limited vocabularies

: Proper way to punctuate an abrupt stopping of speech? I'd like to properly punctuate one of my characters being stopped in speech, followed by a sentence that explains that the character didn't

: Pieces missing from my narrative I have this (IMHO) cool idea for a general storyline I want to write about, and one or two ideas for characters. However, I'm really struggling to go about

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