[Timothy Nordmann]

Mark I agree with everything you said. You had a lot of great ideas.

I do have an update to offer. For better or worse this is how the situation panned out.

A customer tried to coerce me into giving him a good price on all the game tapes and if I didn’t give him the price he demanded he threatened to download them off HUDL for free.

Long story short I emailed and phoned HUDL’s legal department and a phone call to the school’s athletic dept and after a long back and forth they HUDL and the coach agreed to take the videos down.

I really wouldn’t of said anything about it but when a potential customer threatens to steal something I had to act.

Thanks again for your input Mark, I like it.

[Timothy Nordmann]

It seems as if were having a failure to have a meeting of the minds here. There obviously is no employer employee relationship as none of the criteria you listed were met. In order for an independent contractor to be considered work for here there has to be a contract and in this case there was no contract. I appreciate your input, but it seems we are both at an impasse, and that is ok. I appreciate your input anyway. It is rare that I get to exchange thoughts with other professions and I am very grateful for that opportunity.

[Timothy Nordmann]

To clarify. I am not employed by a company and I am not being hired by a company as an independent contractor to do work. I am a sole proprietor doing work directly for a customer.

[Timothy Nordmann]

I work in the midwest.

It seems we have a different understand of when your work is automatically considered work for hire.

You wrote that if you are not salaried you are considered work for hire, when it seems in fact the salaried employee is the one who’s work is automatically considered work for hire, not the independent contractor.

If you are an employee your employer automatically owns the copyright, but that relationship does not exist when you are a freelancer being commissioned to do work.

If you are an independent contractor then the rules and requirements (the ones I posted earlier) for your work to be considered work for hire need to be applied. Including a mutual agreeable contract.

Also your work would have to be meet ALL three of the following criteria to be considered a work for hire.

The work must come within one of the nine limited categories of works listed in the definition above, namely (1) a contribution to a collective work, (2) a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, (3) a translation, (4) a supplementary work, (5) a compilation, (6) an instructional text, (7) a test, (8) answer material for a test, (9) an atlas;

The work must be specially ordered or commissioned;
There must be a written agreement between the parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire.[1]

Here are my sources for you to review.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire
https://copylaw.com/new_articles/wfh.html
https://www.keepyourcopyrights.org/copyright/rights/work-for-hire

[Timothy Nordmann]

I personally would think about taking all of those clips and turning it into a multi clip to do your editing. You can sync them all up using the audio from the song that you captured using your camera. Then once it is all done and you’ve made all your cuts you can lay your studio audio underneath the video clips. Then make sure your audio in the multi clip audio is silenced and you should be good to go.

[Timothy Nordmann]

I very much appreciate the input, as everybody is coming up with really helpful ideas.

I agree with your ideas of not fighting copyright, but for me only under certain circumstances. For instance. A football team hired me to cover their whole season, and they wanted to upload it to hudl. So I made a counter offer agreeing to waive my copyright, but in exchange I would get a larger fee to cover my loss of revenue. They were happy, and I was happy.

I make very little money on sports related work that comes through my office, so at times it feels silly to get upset over something I make so little money on. I wouldn’t really care if a bride uploaded one of my videos, as they have paid a fair market price for my services and nobody feels cheated. But when an athletes parent simply steals a video, that means they got something, and I receive nothing. I am ok with existing customers sharing my videos online. In fact I would like to see more of it, especially when my watermark is on it.

Your story about PSY makes good sense and is a good alternative to the way I see things.

Going back to the work for hire issue here is the info I was going on and what constitutes work for hire. I am no expert by any means on this particular subject. I have copy and pasted that info below.

———————————————–

For a work created by an independent contractor (or freelancer) to qualify as a work for hire, three specific conditions found in the Copyright Act must be meet:

1. the work must be “specially ordered” or “commissioned.” What this means is the independent contractor is paid to create something new (as opposed to being paid for an already existing piece of work); and

2. prior to commencement of work, both parties must expressly agree in a signed document that the work shall be considered a work made for hire; and

3. the work must fall within at least one of the following nine narrow statutory categories of commissioned works list in the Copyright Act:

(1) a translation, (2) a contribution to a motion picture or other audiovisual work, (3) a contribution to a collective work (such as a magazine), (4) as an atlas, (5) as a compilation, (6) as an instructional text, (7) as a test, (8) as answer material for a test, (9) or a supplementary work (i.e., “a secondary adjunct to a work by another author” such as a foreword, afterword, chart, illustration, editorial note, bibliography, appendix and index

[Timothy Nordmann]

Under my limited understanding of what work for hire means, I feel that this was not a work for hire arrangement. I am not an employee and there was no contract. As there was no mutual agreement, I feel this wasn’t a work for hire arrangement.

I have a subscription based pricing system based on how many customers participate versus the number of games you subscribe to. So rarely does only one individual hire me.

In the lower right hand corner I write ©Nordmann Photography with an slight outline and a drop shadow, all set to a 40% opacity. Yes, it is good when it is shared, under the right circumstances.

I am ok with one of my customers sharing and uploading tidbits or highlight reels, but the person who has never ordered anything from me, and steals the video and then re-uploads it, that gets me kind of bent out of shape.

Another user on youtube actually covered up my watermark with a graphic and uploaded my video. But thankfully youtube has a quick and easy process to follow when someone does things like that.

[Timothy Nordmann]

I posted my previous comment too soon. HUDL refused to delete the videos.

[Timothy Nordmann]

I went ahead and emailed them a formal request and provided the information needed under Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they have agreed to remove my content.

[Timothy Nordmann]

Yes, I definitely agree a lot of things are indeed cleared up by friendly chat. Indeed we have had a couple of conversation about not having this to end up on HUDL or YouTube, but it was all verbal.

To answer your question, I have spoken to the original customer, but he, nor his child uploaded the video to their HUDL account, it was other athletes who were not customers. The customer is very friendly and very sympathetic to my cause is also bummed so many other people are getting free use out of the video he paid for.