In March I posted a short post on CrIB about the Surface Unsigned festival. Following questions in the comments I extended this post with some speculation about an item in their terms and conditions. CiB was contacted by someone at Surface demanding the post be removed from the internet citing the printing of an excerpt of their terms and conditions as copyright infringement. We’ve replaced the quote with a paraphrased version but the post itself will stay up.
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and here is my personal take on it (probably NSFW)
And here is my take on the matter.
This legal threat is highly spurious for several reasons.
1. I can’t find the “festival’s” terms and conditions, but I expect they are much longer than this one paragraph. Copyright law only applies when you quote a “substantial part” of a work.
2. Even if this was the entire terms and conditions, there is a very strong defence case for this being fair comment on a matter of public interest.
3. So copyright doesn’t come into it.
4. Even if Surface has a non-disclosure agreement with the bands taking part, there is no such contractual relationship between Surface and CiB.
What an own goal by Surface. Instead of engaging with the issue, explaining what the money is used for, how much it costs to administer the competition, pointing to the success stories large and small of bands who have taken part, they are now going to be branded as exploitative cowards who don’t understand the blogosphere or the law.
Linked from my end.
linked to from the top of birmingham alive! (josh & jonny – fancy doing the same thing on your sites ?), & also blogged about on my personal blog & the stirrer forum.
i notice there is no real-world contact information on the surface website anywhere. is that not mandatory these days for businesses ?
Blogged: http://pigsonthewing.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/suface-unsigned-to-be-avoided/
Let’s all make sure that this page is added to magnolia, Digg, Delicious etc.; and tagged with surface-unsigned
Me too, me too!
Surface Unsigned hire Lionel Hutz
Updated my post:
http://pigsonthewing.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/suface-unsigned-to-be-avoided/
The person behind Surface Unsigned is involved in another event which openly advertsies similar conditions.
More here, too:
http://www.uksponsorship.com/a941.htm
And now, courtesy Stuart Fowkes over at Oxfordbands:
http://www.oxfordbands.com/2008/05/19/pay-to-play/
Is that the first outside-Brum post?
Another thing that concerns me about this is how they handle the text voting (details on the banner at the bottom of the http://www.surfaceunsigned.co.uk/presspage.html). If a band does not qualify by not bringing 25 fans, what happens to any text votes for that band? Voters have to pay £1 plus network fee for each vote. Is this announced at the end of the gig before voting starts “You can vote for BandA, BandC and BandD, but not BandB”. This seems unlikely.
FYI:
http://forums.mirror.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=1219580#1219580
How comes everyone gets lovely trackback things showing but I don’t. The internet’s a mystery to me sometimes.
Anyway – just to note I’ve written about this at the Birmingham Post (with a copy on my own blog)
Dave
I’m in
CiB is doing a great service to Birmingham and to music by bringing this to people’s attention. Good on you.