WhyILoveTiVo.com contest

[Fairlight]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 12:34:44PM -0400, Kenneth Brody thus spoke:
> On 4/11/2014 11:32 AM, Fairlight wrote:
> >Besides the fact I only have Cable Broadband and not Cable TV (by choice),
> >I wouldn't find enough time to -get- to the stuff I deferred.  My Netflix
> >queue is 119+ items long, many of them series.
> >
> >If I defer watching something, it takes ages to get watched.  I'd fill the
> >HD and need to sacrifice something in order to tape new stuff I'd never get
> >to.  Worked that way with VCRs.
> 
> You can hook up external USB HDs.  Just hook up a several TB drive,
> and you're good to go.  :-)

It's like deferring non-essential email.  Eventually, I end up with several
thousand messages that I never read, and just archive somewhere.  You
think you'll get to it, but the reality is, you never will.   I'd just end
up buying more and more hard drives.

> We're hoping that, being only a few seconds long, it falls under "fair use".

Doubtful.  There's no "fair use" for synchronisation rights.  If there
were, you wouldn't have to get samples (often only a few seconds) cleared
for contests. 

When Image-Line runs a remix contest, they flat-out say that any samples
must be cleared for publication.  

The problem is this...  You have -probable- coverage for personal "fair
use".  Actually, that's a misnomer.  Someone once explained to me that
"fair use" is not actually a -right-, it's a -defence- against alleged
violations.  So you're already looking at it incorrectly.

But back to the problem...  On your own, just in a private channel, those
few seconds are probably covered by a "fair use" defence.  However, if TIVO
(or the company behind it, if the name differs) intends to use the
commercial in a broadcast capacity anywhere if it should win, -they- would
have to have synchronisation rights to the theme song in order to do so
legally.  So they'd have to get it cleared with the BBC.  This is unlikely,
so they'd likely just skip over the entry as a contender due to legal
sticking their oar in.

The BBC is -somewhat- relaxed about the theme song.  There's a whole remix
site up (I even have my entry in there...I've remixed the song myself) with
thousands of mixes.  They haven't been shut down.  But it's in a grey area,
as it's completely non-commercial.  It's not technically legal, though,
strictly speaking.  Now, the second you bring it -near- anything
commercial, they're going to spring into action.

YMMV & IANAL.  But as AFAIK, synchronisation rights have no time limit on
duration of sampling/excerpts.  You either have to pay or you don't.  The
only people who don't have to worry about using that theme without paying
for sync rights are the BBC themselves.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.