Um...I'm not sure why I got this email, but I did, so I thought I would pass it along.... but it was sent by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Of course this may be old news
Hello, My name is Laura Phillips from the University. I am an Administrative Director for the school and I represent Christine in this discussion. I apologize that this is a long post, but I am going to be addressing the entire conversation so far on this subject and explaining what it is John is really up against and also that we intend NO harm toward John and have always just wanted to find a peaceful solution with him. First of all, Jenny was not authorized to make any agreements of any sort, and it says that the only person who is authorized to make contractual agreements are the board of directors. Jenny is just a young girl who didn't realize the seriousness of the situation or the implications that copyright infringement can bring. Just because Jenny was unknowledgeable about how to handle the situation and did not alert managing staff to the misuse of the video that UMS owns, this does not grant permission and will not be upheld in a court of law. Managing staff did not know about the video until only a few days ago. Only the owners of such copyrighted material are allowed to grant permissions. The permission was not granted by an authorized person, so no contract can be honored in court. Jenny, fresh out of high school, is not authorized to make contracts on behalf of the company. As for the Fair Use Act, John Holden is seriously out of sync with what the Fair Use Act entails. Yes, material is allowed in 3 second clips to be used in parody or commentary. However, entire videos from beginning to end are clearly not allowed, as proven by previous court cases that have been presented to us. The video is not part of a series, and the videos have never been put into one work as if it is all one video in a DVD or any other media. They are only numbered for organizational purposes on youtube so as to keep track of them, which is a practice many people do. At no place in the video is it said that is it part of a series. No videos continue any topic, each topic is discussed only in one video, and each discussion stands alone. There are no continuations. So it is clear to say that the entire video was used by John Holden, exactly all 04:57 minutes of it, (5 minutes) and nothing less. This far exceeds what the fair use act was intended for. There are four factors in determining what fair use is. Number 3 and 4 are what come into play and where John Holden is seriously mistaken. This is where a jury and judge would find fault with his ideas that he has partaken in fair use. Just because a lawyer will take it pro bono so he can have fun challenging it does not put John in a safe place. It is no hair off the lawyer's back if John loses, and if John were to lose, he could be left with large fines and our lawyer's fees to pay. The pro bono lawyer walks away with not a scratch while John Holden is left holding the bag. So don't get too comfortable with the fact that a free lawyer will help out. You get what you pay for. Free is not a good price when you have so much to lose. Is a parody worth thousands of dollars in a lost lawsuit? Factor 3 in the fair use act tells the jury that they must weigh "how much of the copyrighted material is used" and using the whole thing in its entirety is a clear violation of the fair use act, since only short clips are allowed. Why do you think Saturday Night Live only uses 3 second clips? It is because that is what is safe to get away with. Factor number 4 is that the jury must determine "harm to the business" that the infringement does. Since students of the school have complained about the comments left on John's video and have complained about the video itself, which were indeed harmful to the business, we do believe that a jury would find that the video is in violation on factor 4 as well. John is safe with factors 1 and 2, but as for 3 and 4, he is not. If even one of these factors has been violated, it is found to be a complete violation. There is no "in between." --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Jay dedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > A lawyer who is an expert in copyright law and online free speech has > > offered to represent me pro bono! And it all happened because I > > started talking about on this list and Irina forwarded it to Jason > > Schultz at LawGeek who is now representing me. I can't thank everybody > > enough. File this one as an instance of the community standing up for > > somebody. > > that's awesome. > I would love to set some precedent for quoting video. > as I said before, it's an accepted practice to quote text from > someone's blog and make comment on it. > this is called conversation/critique. > When a videoblogger quotes video from someone's blog and makes comment > on it, there's a big chance it's called infringement. > > I know its a hazy issue, but be great to start defining. > if not, we're just going to have all these separate videos on youtube > with no interaction between them. > its just TV again with lots of different channels. > > Jay > > > -- > http://jaydedman.com > 917 371 6790 > Video: http://ryanishungry.com > Twitter: http://twitter.com/jaydedman > Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/jaydedman/ > RSS: http://tinyurl.com/yqgdt9 >
