Channel 9 Melbourne, stop stealing my stuff….

I’d love to work in main stream media, there are so many perks. The biggest these days seems to be that you can appropriate content from anyone with a glib line and not give them any recognition what-so-ever.

Melbourne had a very impressive line of thunderstorms move through on Friday (12 Nov. 2010) evening, so as a weather “nut”, I’ve got the radar on the computer, and the camera ready to go. When a squall hit at home, I switched from stills to a quick 1 minute video.

Perchance on Saturday night, (TV in the kitchen while cooking tea) I happen to catch the Melbourne 9 news story about the weather. And whilst still being grumpy about calling something a mini tornado, which there is no such thing as, I see a glimpse of a bit of footage, and think, hey that looks familiar…

Today, I checked the NineMSN website for the story, with that nagging feeling still present… and guess what… it WAS my footage. 2 seconds or 10 seconds doesn’t matter to me. It was my footage, I did not give permission, was not asked for consent, was given no recognition, and certainly I was not TOLD.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/video.aspx?videoid=1cdb6005-75d8-4622-9ba0-c81aae430307 ( scroll to 1:22 )  ( Can someone identify the second piece of footage? )

If I had been asked, the chances are I would have said yes, but that really is beside the point. If someone from Channel 9 is surfing YouTube for content, how hard would it be to leave a comment saying, “great footage, can we use it”, or even, “great footage, we used a few seconds of it on the news”. It is about recognition, not theft!

Guessing what 3 seconds of footage on primetime news costs, I think if channel 9 buy me a new Nikon D7000, I’ll take that as payment for services rendered.

Really, come on media, lift your game.

My footage ( watch on youtube for the 720 version, video recorded on my Nikon D90)

and one of my still shots…

Cloudy with the chance of Apocalypse

Update:

——–

COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 – SECT 42

Fair dealing for purpose of reporting news

(1)  A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work, does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if:

(a)  it is for the purpose of, or is associated with, the reporting of news in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical and a sufficient acknowledgement of the work is made; or

(b)  it is for the purpose of, or is associated with, the reporting of news by means of a communication or in a cinematograph film.

——–

I’m guessing option b is what their defence would be, but still, my point of being TOLD, is not covered.  Someone from Channel 9 was on Youtube, took MY copyrighted content, for “news” value and couldn’t even be arsed to leave a comment saying that they had?

I guess it falls into the you wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, don’t steal a movie, unless it has news value, and you don’t want to even notify the owner of the video you have “stolen” it.

Unless as per Section 6 par C of the Youtube TOS http://www.youtube.com/t/terms Channel 9 have a licensing deal with Youtube for content.   Personally I’d like to know if Channel 9 do have a deal with YouTube, and certainly if they haven’t does the Copyright Act trump the TOS of Youtube and Google? ( I’ll leave the lawyers for the respective parties to argue that one )

Perhaps it is time the Copyright Act was dramatically updated to include fair use of social media.  A clause of attribution and notification on the source of the content seems reasonable to me.

15 Responses to “Channel 9 Melbourne, stop stealing my stuff….”

  1. Did you contact them about it?

  2. If copyright owners don’t contact and complain, then all Channel Nine does is look wide-eyed and innocent and say “but nobody complained to us about it”.

    Hey, ask for a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism…

  3. I’d send them an invoice.

  4. I would complain and complain loudly. It isn’t hard to give credit for images used. The BBC used one of my lunar eclipse photos but they asked first and also gave me credit as the photographer.

  5. Look at the settings for your video. YT doesn’t show this option when you upload the video. After it’s uploaded, list your videos under “My Video” and select the “edit” option for a video (don’t play the video). Down the bottom you’ll see a list of “Broadcasting and sharing options”. One of the options is “Syndication”. I think YT defaults to Yes, but if you don’t want stuff appearing on TV set it to No. At that point, I am pretty sure anyone who uses your material without your express permission is breaking the rules.

  6. Media Watch?

  7. Hey, I suggest you contact Copyright Australia. Companies like Ch9 pay annual amounts to them so they can sort out stuff like this. My NFP business got a cheque because some school reprinted one of our flyers.
    Nice pics though.

  8. if you plan on putting media on youtube for sharing and don[‘t want to share then adjust your settings accordingly.. What do you expect??

  9. Fully agree you deserve credit, but Ch9’s lawyers wouldn’t even break a sweat defending this under the section of the Copyright Act you cite, 42 (1b). The Act protects them and doesn’t require compensation or acknowledgment.

    Great photo, can’t check the vid here.

  10. I also think its lame that they had so little footage of the storm in their own city they have to scour YouTube for shots 🙂

    Not that your video doesn’t work but its not really television

    I see the note about sharing – one of the reasons I’m reluctant to use YouTube is that unlike Flickr you don’t seem to be able to provide a CC license on content

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