Copyright laws and making WoW videos

[Mangea]

I'm in the process of making a series of WoW guides, and I there's a bunch of clips from copyright material that I want to use, anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes of a song here and there. I know that when Ciderhelm was making WoW videos, he used music which he had purchased the license to. But when I go to WarcraftMovies, there's a ton of videos using copyrighted music, and I'm pretty doubtful they've received permission from the copyright holder.

I've looked up fair use laws, and it seems a little vague for what's considered fair use and what isn't for non-commercial purposes. So before I include all this copyright music in my guides, I wanted to ask if anyone here had experience with how to use copyright material for non-commercial use. Any pointers? Thanks in advance.

[Fetzie]

If your video contains content not licensed for public usage (basically all music produced by a major label), youtube can take it down at the copyright holder's request. Your video, if not taken down, may not be viewable in certain countries. If your youtube account has multiple copyright claims made against it, it can be closed. In theory at least, copyright holders could sue you for damages. As for WCM, I do not know what their policies are.

What you can do is use the World of Warcraft music as the background, as Blizzard grants us non-commercial movie makers a license to use their intellectual properties in such films.