can a client tamper with the edit without director's/producer's consent?

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Steve House

As for weird exceptions, I was surprised to learn a while back that here in Canada, our copyright law lists as an exception portraits shot by a professional studio photographer, explicitly assigning their copyright to the party contracting to have the picture made. Most of my knowledge of copyright law was acquired in the US prior to my moving North, and under US law it belongs to the photographer absent written agreement to assign them to the client.

This highlights the importance about not extrapolating from one's knowledge of one legal jurisdiction to another even when the legal roots of that country's laws are similar e.g. derived from British law. AFAIK the situation in the UK for still photographs was that the commissioning client by default owned copyright but this changed sometime within the last 20 years whereas in Australia that situation still pertains.

[Nick Hiltgen]

Why cant you post the full version up on youtube? Or your own myspace page, the whole point of doing this was for you to show off your work, the dude modified it for his web page why can't you post it on your web page? I mean you said yourself there's no contract, and I seriously doubt that he would pursue any sort of legal action (note i don't know anything about you him or the video but the fact that distribution seems to be myspace then I feel like I have a good guess on the scenario), and if he did then you can bring up your defense of his version not giving the proper credit.

[David W. Jones]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

David, I COULD NOT DISAGREE MORE and actually find this response to be inflammatory. This SHOULD have been considered "contra" work and Ali got NOTHING in return for his contribution to making this a success.

Does this happen EVERY DAY? Yes. Should it? NO!

You find this response to be inflammatory?

In Ali's own words... "There was no contract, no agreement, no written letters or anything of the sort"... Ali decided to put credits on the end of the video, the Guy the video was made for decided to take them off screen and put them in the text description which accompanies the video, nothing more.

Shaun, as someone who has been working hard at your craft to support yourself for a number of years, I would think you would be more in-sensed with someone giving away what you do for a living, for free.

And as far as Ali getting nothing in return for his contribution to the project...
Ali got something more valuable than cash, Ali learned a life lesson!

People tend to be more guarded with something they had to pay for, than something that was free.

All The Best!

[Shaun Roemich]

David: thanks for your carefully considered (and polite) reply.

The issue I took was with the "big head" comment solely.

We have ALL done free work at some point in our lives and/or careers. Do I condone it? No.

What I ENCOURAGE all that will gather around my soapbox to do is make a fair and equitable contra deal anytime a client LEGITIMATELY cannot afford video work. A not-for-profit can ofttimes be included in a proposal application as a co-applicant to an agency that funds exactly this sort of thing. Often, not being able to afford video can EASILY be offset by some creative thinking. If the client is unwilling to HELP YOU help them by trying to find adequate funding venues, they have ZERO interest in becoming a client and any and all promises of future work should be summarily dismissed as lies (or worse).

I recently did a contra deal with a band with 4 friends of mine that resulted in a small amount of cash and a commitment from one of the wives to do a beautiful corporate logo and image redesign for MY company. I wasn't prepared to shell out the cash for my redesign (I WOULD have done it myself if pressed) and the band couldn't afford to shell out the cash for live performance and Electronic Press Kit video (but again WOULD HAVE done their best to do it themselves). No harm, no foul. We both got "paid", albeit not in cash.