Re: Who's Liable? - Who 'owns' tapes?

In copyright issues there are layers within layers within layers.

You own the copyrights to the tapes you shot. They are your creative work. That has NO bearing on any other copyrights that might be embedded in that work. A good example is if you shoot in a restaurant - a background music system was playing a song - the rights holders of the song copyrights STILL have those rights if their work ends up on your tape - and they can legally sue you to prevent you from using their song on your tape without their permission.

That's why I'm saying that if your tape is a recording of someone speaking - that SPEAKER maintains all rights to the speech they've written and presented on your tape unless they specifically assign those rights to you.

What you "own" is the copyright to YOUR work. Nobody can use your footage without your permission. And it's perfectly possible that YOU can't use it either - if it contains someone elses copyright material.

The ONLY safe situation is when you've paid attention to all the parties work contained in your "derivative work" and secured release from all the rights holders to all the copyright works contained therein.

This is why those professionals came equipped with RELEASES when they showed up. They wanted to DOCUMENT that the rights to broadcast or otherwise use the footage they shot had been cleared.

It sounds like neither YOU - nor the people who hired you - did that. So your stuck with everyone having their own copyrights to the parts of the content that they created (the speech and the separate recording thereof ) and as a result - neither party can turn it into anything marketable without the other parties permission.

That's simply how this stuff works.

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Conner