Without giving out the story, i would just like to know if i have any legal grounds.
I filmed a 30 second commercial, ended up being a legal issue and i deleted it off youtube.
A national television show contacted me about using the commercial to which i politely declined and went about my day.
Last night said television show played about 25 seconds out of the 30 second commercial.
I signed no release forms, and even told them not to use it. They probably got the video from a local news station that ran a story on the day it was released.
Do i have any legal rights here?
You are not my lawyer, but i would like to know if i have any rights here.
It’s hard to imagine how 25 of the 30 seconds counts as “fair use”, although if the broadcast was a news show, then maybe.
But one thing does seem clear: You have the copyright. There’s no requirement for you to have filed anything, though that does make stuff easier sometimes. Either they claim “fair use”, or you win. I suppose. IANAL and all that.
"Fair Use"includes, IIRC, commentary and news reporting.
If their use was criticism, comment or news reporting - I assume it was - then they are fully entitled. I suspect the asked as a courtesy; you said no; their legal advice said they could use it anyway. As long as it fits in some category above, you are outta luck. It would cost a fortune to sue, and you may not win.
If your work was pulled from YouTube and not available due to legal disputes or something, it was available before that for free and had been shown on other news shows, you’d have a hard time arguing they had destroyed the market for it.
Copyright is not based on if there’s a market for the OP’s material. If he created a unique work, then it’s his to sell or give away or hoard as he likes. However, if the work was an infringement of someone else’s copyrighted material, he might not be considered the copyright owner if his work was not deemed a unique work which he personally created.
If he just filmed someone else performing a song, for example, the performer owns the copyright to the performance (but may or may not own the copyright to the song - that’s a separate headache.) If he used a snippet of that film in a commercial for the venue, he would still have to get permission from the performer. I think.
You have rights, as others have said. However, that may not mean much.
If you registered your commercial with the Library of Congress’ Copyright Office within 90 days of creating it, you may be able to sue for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement. With that kind of money on the line, you may be able to get a lawyer interested in taking your case, and you might be able to pressure the infringer into a quick settlement.
If you didn’t register, you can only sue for actual damages, which is almost certainly bupkis. If you have several hundred thousand bucks on hand, you may be able to find a lawyer who’ll charge you his regular hourly rate to go after the national TV show and its (deep-pocketed) network. But if you “win,” the most you’ll recover is your legal fees, and possibly not even that.
Did you not see rule number 3–the part about how much of the entire work you can show? Commentary alone is not enough to make something fair use. All four factors are considered, not just one.
Heck, I remember a case of a news organization using a clip from a Charlie Chaplin movie to announce his death, while discussing his performance in said movie. Ultimately, it failed the substantiality requirement, as it was considered the most important part of the film.
Googling tells me this is Roy Export Co. Estab. of Vaduz v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., Inc. (I’d provide a link, but the site in question tried to hijack my clipboard, so I will not be providing them any views.)
BigT, you may be right, but there are no hard and fast rules about Fair Use. What is and is not Fair Use in any given case can only be determined in court. And if the work wasn’t registered in a timely fashion, and if there aren’t substantial actual damages at stake, the matter will never get to court.
Also, to the OP, what is the nature of the “legal issue” that led you to take it off YouTube? This could make a big difference to your legal position.
Let’s say, for instance, you did a 30 second commercial calling the Republicans all “poopyheads” and it was both timely, and funny, and the local news saw it on YouTube and posted a link or even showed the commercial during a newscast, using it to show the dissatisfaction on the part of some local residents. It was used as news, no particular agreement or disagreement of the opinions on their part - just “news” as to what is being posted.
Later, you got flack from YouTube or from family or whatever, and decided to delete the video of the commercial.
The video commercial has already been shown as “news”, and I think therein lies the problem - it is hard to put those worms back in the can after it has once been used in fair use, especially if the other broadcast could also be considered to be using it in fair use “news” reporting.
Now, if they ran the ad as is, and you could prove someone is profiting unfairly from your work (they sold it to another company, or someone was paying them to continue to run the ad), well then you might have a different cause to sue or at least get a cease and desist letter.
I am most certainly not a lawyer, but worked for whole bunches of lawyers and some of their tidbits rubbed off on me - but I guess it depends on those variables how strong/weak of a case you have.
No, posting on YouTube doesn’t negate a film maker’s ownership of filmmaker’s work.
Also, you don’t have to register anything - it’s not like trademark or patents - but if it goes to court for some reason, it’s helpful to have documented your creation.
Here is an article that points out that even though copyright law allows for recovery of legal fees, they aren’t always awarded.
I have reason to know about this because I have had to threaten infringers of my copyrights, and my position was weakened by the fact that I had not filed within the 90-day period for some issues of my newsletter.
I have to correct one point in my earlier post: copyright has to be registered within 90 days of publishing, not creating, the work. (In my case, as a newsletter publisher, they are essentially the same.)