Copyright Laws

For our OTS, I am producing my own song to use for the live action part, but due to limited resources, for the animation we wish to use an existing song over it, buit with copyright laws, this is difficult.

I have found out that the first 30 seconds of a song is acceptable to be used, without breaching any serious copyright laws.
PRS is the website/organisation that protects artists from people using their music, if I were to purchase a license to use music, this would probably be the one:


http://www.prsformusic.com/users/recordedmedia/corporate/Pages/Public%20Exhibitions%20%28SG4%29.aspx

Since we only need a short extract from a song, only the intro will be used, so this should not effect copyright that much, additionally we are using it for educational purposes. This is another link I found regarding using music for school projects, but unfortuatly, the actual page is being redesigned at this time:


http://www.prsformusic.com/whoareyou/edu/Pages/default.aspx

Edit: Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.