Copyrights on movie sound clips

I ran across a couple of newsgroup postings in my Alta Vista search of motion picture copyrights.

I have a client who is considering a business that will likely be impacted by this issue. A simple example: Say 1000 people each pay $5.00 to participate in a contest. All of them will hear four sound bites each containing all or part of a line of dialog from a movie. The person who correctly guesses the name of the actor, the character portrayed, and the name of the movie will win say $3,000.

I know of the licensing issues regarding the showing of a complete movie video to a public group but what about clips. I was told by a representative of MPLC to look at the clip licensing dept of the Motion Picture Association of America, http://www.mpaa.org/, but could not find such a dept. Do you have any suggestions or comments about this venture? Are there some good web sites that are on point with my client's business? I need to know how to find the copyright owners and how to contact them.

Thank you very much.
SJA Sam J. Adams
<sja[_at_]onramp.net> Received on Sun Sep 27 1998 - 14:01:06 GMT