Warning: Article on AOL video service and getting rights to your footage

[Wayne Morellini]

Camcorderinfo has done something useful, they have published this article about the AOL UnCut service, asserting the license agreement gives AOL rights to your footage, including making profit from it and not having to pay you. There is also more:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...abs-Rights.htm

[Marco Wagner]

Wow that's scary! How's Google's approach to this?

[Greg Boston]

Although I haven't read the article Wayne referenced, that's pretty much the legal agreement I have found when you submit pics and videos to the local tv stations. It becomes theirs, and you have no recourse for compensation of any type. They are free to use it where and how they wish. Same goes for the cable networks and their 'citizen journalist' submission forms.

-gb-

[Chris Hurd]

Instead of linking to a link to the subject, why not just link to the subject in the first place:

http://communityvideo.aol.com/Main.do

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Although I haven't read the article Wayne referenced, that's pretty much the legal agreement I have found when you submit pics and videos to the local TV stations. It becomes theirs, and you have no recourse for compensation of any type. They are free to use it where and how they wish. Same goes for the cable networks and their 'citizen journalist' submission forms.

-gb-

Interesting, normally, under my limited understanding, I think, for a contract to be legally valid, and enforceable, there has to be renumeration fro something. Here I guess they can say it is for hosting files, but equally there maybe provisions, I don't know if current, or in your country, for the contract to be balanced and fair (not exploitative) where such a thing might be "tested" (if that law does gold in a case like this).

But these TV stations, are they paying for this, or paying for showing stuff, or at least doing you a service in return, if not, that is reprehensible, and I wonder if those "agreements" hold nay real weight at all (apart from trying you up in court paying to try to prove they are invalid) and you still retain copyright as the author, to use and sell it yourself. If not, I would ask a lawyers opinion if in doubt, if there is clear law/precedents. Hogs in the trough, collecting it all for themselves, that they did not work for.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Instead of linking to a link to the subject, why not just link to the subject in the first place:

http://communityvideo.aol.com/Main.do

Sorry, because it was about camcorderinfo's article and their opinion on it. The camcorderinfo article should remain current, and bear a witness to what the AOL agreement was saying at the time, where as AOL can change their agreement at any time and make a link to it invalid. The other thing is, if camcorderinfo says it instead of us, they remain legally responsible instead of us, we are merely speculating on the meaning and validity of their comments, as witnesses. What do you think, Chris?

[Steve McDonald]

I've checked out many web-hosting sites for still pictures, that claim to have rights to any pictures you store on your personal photo space with them. These aren't just free accounts, but some charge you for the service and still claim picture rights. I don't imagine they would pluck many pictures from these accounts and be able to sell them for a profit. But often, they select the better ones for their "best shots of the month" group or put them on their homepage for promotional purposes. If you put a picture on such an account and they did sell it, what could you do about it? Would you bring a lawsuit over it? Not likely you'd go to that bother and expense.

I've found some photos of mine that I posted on newsgroups that later showed up on website collections in many parts of the World. Sometimes, the people contacted me and asked permission first and sometimes they didn't. If you have some good pictures or videos and don't want them lifted, you might either watermark them or not put them where the public has access.

With much larger and less expensive storage media for home users now available, I never store anything on photo websites. But, this makes my options to share photos very limited. I wonder if there are any trustworthy photo storage sites that specifically state that they do not claim any rights to your photos or videos? Perhaps renting server space for pictures with your own website address, is the best solution, if not the cheapest.

[Wayne Morellini]

That's the point, it is to expensive to do anything about it for most people, they depend on you goign away (unless somebody wises up and does class actions).

They do not need to do this in a number of cases (rather than hiding it in the usually long agreements). All they need to do is state that it will be used for on site example purposes only, and not for any paid profit, in nominated sections, with the user being able to nominate default, and per picture preferences:

Private restricted access by password, nominated individuals or groups, site wide access or public access. That allows them to do their on site promotionals. In the same way, they can also give options fro paid x rate site advertising, paid x rate promotional compilation, paid x rate external compilation, paid x rate external advertising, paid x rate individual, paid ? site everything else approval first (for the "uglies" compilation), and negotiate versions of these.

The sites could become a sort of photo collection repository for sale to compete with existing commercial photo sites. I don't know why people can't grow some intel sometimes, instead of mucking around with stealthy underhanded tricks.