I have been confronted with the question whether Parkour is illegal according to law(closed forum). This was the main question on parkour.nl, and I answered that it could be, in some cases and drafted a "best practise" guideline.
Along with that, the idea came along that it is better to prevent conversations with the police and people from the neighborhood and create an information brochure. Since Parkour is quite an unknown (urban) sport, especially in little villages. The brochure was easily made in one day after the initial idea.
Of course I used some pictures of others and I had some doubts but I think I solved the legal part.
First: Thanks to Malene Hald for the drawings she had put on her blog online: www.malenehald.dk
I have cited three of the six characters you have drawn and uploaded.
I gave credit to your name and to your blog.
I put your name in the "labels for this post"
Hopefully many people will try to reach your blog and maybe you'll get an assignment through my reference.
Secondly: Thanks to MATT-JAM3S for the GIF-file with stickfigures.
I have made three Prt Scrs and then editted the figures completely into a figure I found good enough for the brochure.
I have cited three screenshots out of a GIF-file.
I gave credit to your name and to the location of the GIF-file.
But I gave myself the credits for the composition, due to the fact that I have made it a totally different structure, idea and created a derivative work.
"Dit is Parkour": Dutch brochure (drafted: 7 octber 2009).
My sister (Yutta Sterenborg) is now getting into the business of "signmaking". So for all your T-shirts and commercial advertisement on e.g. windows, cars go to her homepage: www.yutta-style.nl. Due to that I have been thinking about infringement action by assistent parties.
Creating and developing T-shirts, car stickers, commercial window covers for restaurants, etc, is her main task. The assignments she gets often seems like an action infringing copyright or trademark laws. When she is using a logo with permission from the one who owns the logo, there is no problem whatsoever, like here:
When she is copying a logo from a trademark owner that is not the assignment giving person. Who is liable for the infringing action: Should the assigment giving person be the only one that can be held liable in court for an infringing action Could the one reproducing the trademark or copyrighted work held liable? Or is the reproducing person only a tool to infringe? Is there automatically a rule that says that the assignment giving person is liable for his actions?
In other words: What is her position?
In my view this could be settled with the use of general terms of agreement. Though in the signmaking business it is not quite a settled practice to hand over the general terms of agreement before or upon an agreement is reached. There is often only an oral agreement:
Assignment giving person: "Could you create a T-shirt that says: "All men are like wine, the older they get the better they become". Assignee: "Yes, I can..." and within 3 minutes a T-shirt seize, color, print is created and customly made for the individual.
But since the person giving the assignment (in the end) profits from the work created, in my view the assisting person is not to be held liable. There is often not much of credit for the person who created the tool for the assignment giving person. There are often more benefits/credits for the one who wears, drives or run a shop with a commercial window cover.
According to the law the assignment also ends upon delivery of a good product/service. After this there is no legal relationship left, unless there is something fundamentally wrong with the product or service, and as one might expect and ask for a repair (not being an copyright or trademark infringement).
Basically in my view, the assignee ceases to have any liability, when the custom-made good or product is delivered. During the time the assignment is not yet full-filled the assignement giving person could always refuse to accept the result. And in most of the cases, there is nothing made public yet and no infringement took place. Due to the fact that the assignement giving person accepts the product or service, he/she also receives the liability for the product or service.
The relationship between the two (assignment giver and assignee) should govern the legal infringement. And in my view the assignee should be protected in this matter, since the assignment giver profits from the work and paid (probably) a minimal lump sum compared to the possible legal infringment cost the assignee otherwise faces.
When the assignment giver explicitly pays a lot more, one could expect that the assignee took over the liability for infringement. Though an assignee might not be competitive enough if he/she does that and will not get any assignments.
But it really depends on the circumstances of each case. It should all be judged upon the own merit of the case.
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All pictures are used under the exception of "Quotation", the copyright lies in the hands of Yutta Sterenborg (my sister) and can be seen on www.yuttastyle.nl/page6.html.
You probably have noticed that I was a bit away. As main reason I had arranged myself a full time traineeship at Hoogenraad & Haak Advocaten (advertising + IP lawyers). Additional to that I have been busy with my music law presentation, my final master thesis (sorry not updates on that one) and Youthmedia.eu.
For that last project I answer the legal questions, mostly connected to IP Law, but also contract law. For this last project they are calling for additional web-designers who would like to cooperate on an open source, online media platform.
The call is as follows, and please forward to any one who might be interested:
When I was reviewing my blog and website as well as my google ranking for my traineeship outcome I noticed my work is getting dusted. Just the opposite from being orphaned, since my name is written all over the place including web address to contact me through.
As an experiment I want to see when the google crawl spider will find my work again in case I publish the link here;
It is the outcome of Dutch Media Law research when I was at the university in Passau:
D.J.R. Sterenborg, Medienrecht in den Niederlanden, 28th august 2008, WWW <<www.jura.uni-passau.de>>
Also available on my personal homepage: www.djrsterenborg.eu under downloads ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After 12 days this message was scanned by a Google Alert on "Daniël Sterenborg"
One limit I put to my master thesis is that I consider that all digital orphaned works have been digitalized legally. With this I limit my readers in concerning about whether or not digitalization of copyrighted works is allowed already? Although with reproduction rights, one might solve this problem?
Exams are passed, results are in and - as you might have noticed - I have the degree of Bachelor of Law (LL.B.). So that is why I did had the time or inspiration to sit back and post anything on this blog.
What also happened is that I have accepted the invitation by the European Law Students' Association, sector Bonn, Germany to give a speech at their conference from 26-27th February 2009 about User Generated Content about Music & Law! And this post is to give a preliminary preview on this lecture. Music & Law <1> The Story The thing about music is that many people enjoy it. Whether this is classical music or pop/alternative or even hiphop music. There are all kinds of music styles, and together with that even many more musicians.
Music makes us dance, has emotions in it, is being used at different locations everywhere in the world. It makes us celebrate, mourn or makes us avoid being annoyed by any silence.
With new technologies, and more important, that these fast spreading technologies reach 'household' in a very fast way, people nowadays only need a computer and some internet infrastructure to get familiar with music. In other words we 'download' mp3-files, e.g. music, because we enjoy, because we consume, because it is accessible and because it is easy accessible.
>Note that I am repeating the argument, but not the content< With new technologies, and more important, that these fast spreading technologies reach 'musical entities' in a very fast way, many musicians only need a computer and some internet infrastructure to sample and create music. In other words, the internet provide for many musicians the bases to re-create, re-mix and re-use.
<2> The Law
Most (at least) western state laws constitutes a freedom of expression and of information. For the European Union article 10 section 1 of the European Convention of Human Rights does apply:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include
freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and
ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of
broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises."
Of course these rights can be subject to limitations, as is done with paragraph 2 of the same article. One of them can be granting a time-limited copyright for creators of a work. Copyright constituted two main exclusive rights for authors of content first to multiply and second to publish their works. This can be done in any form and in any way they like, copyright law is not prescribing nor limiting the forms.
<3> The Technology
Technology – controlled artefacts of any kind – enable people to do things they have not been able to do before the technology was introduced. And because of the huge impact and the access of artefacts/ technology, people are able to do things, they don’t even know they can, nor that they know whether this is allowed or not anyway.
In this short preview we’ll stick to the idea that this is also the case with ‘household’ to use computers (with internet access) are being used all over the world. This new technology leads to many innovative projects, non-web and especially web-based activities are booming.
<4> The Innovation There are three cooperating stages to innovate. Technology - controlled artefacts of all kinds - enables people to do things they have not been able to do before the technology was introduced. For technology to be successful, it needs to be used by people. Without technology being used by people or being developed so more people can use it, it is doomed to be forgotten. At the final stage, the law prohibits people to use technology or applications of technology.
Dr. Pieter Kleve, has put that in a nice graphic design, an alternated version is published here (1):
So basically, with consumers on one hand and with musicians on the other hand at one medium: the internet, we have an established market. Consumers and content creators are meeting at one medium. But along with the very accessible technology development for consumers, also regular consumers can become content creators. And so where we do have numerous of possibilities to consume, share and recreate music (or even, to generalize it: culture). In term of the diagram: the circle of business administration (what people want/ need) is growing bigger, though the law might interpret the new technologies (with all its ‘open norms’) as infringement.
My lecture will concentrate three issues:
- the desired effects considering consumers and creators of culture
- the law in at least 3 countries(2)
- examples of new business models for consumers ánd content creators online. There a no need for new laws, no new interpretations of the law. There is a way that the desired effect, that technology is being used for the benefits of all of mankind, without that the law limits the effects unwanted for those who embrace it.
Hope to see you in Bonn, Germany. The lecture will be held in German, to subscribe please go to:
(1) P. Kleve, "juridische iconen van het informatietijdperk", Deventer: Kluwer 2008, p.23 For Download available at: http://publishing.eur.nl/Available in hard-copy via: www.bol.com/
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