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Anyone up on the legality of this? I know you can use iPhone interface sounds and stuff but what about your phone service (in this case Rogers in Canada) recorded messages like the voicemail message?

EDIT: This is for a short film that may play at festivals or online.

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  • Easiest way would be to it record yourselves and put a telephone effect on it.
    – owl
    Jun 11, 2015 at 7:37

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These recordings belong to their authors or assignees, therefore in order to legally use them in your movie you may have to obtain the owners' license. If all the recordings are of the sort you mentioned in the question then you are most likely exempt from such license, as these recordings are very short and with no artistic or commercial value. You might also be exempt or alternatively covered by a collective license under certain conditions, for example, if your work is undertaken as an academic assignment. In order to get a definitive answer you should review each sound clip against the law, for this purpose you can consult the resources available from The Copyright Board of Canada. In some case you may need to consider also the relevant legislation in your Province.

In some cases, for example if you want to use clips that might be problematic such as musical ringtones or actual music, even transitional background "elevator music", you should prefer sourcing the clips from royalty-free internet services, there are plenty of them for practically any kind of sound you look for, and if you don't find your exact sound you can get it done for pennies in sites such as Fiverr and the likes.

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