Does anyone record severe weather TV coverage?

[David Drummond]

I figured I wasn't the only one who did this! My wife thought I was crazy. Probably thought I was losing my mind or something.

Some of you guys w/ that old news footage should host it on www.filefront.com for people to download and watch. That would be awesome!

Yeah, except it would probably be a violation of the news stations copyrights to do that.

From personal experience, I think at the very worst they would send legal documentation notifying you to remove all copyrighted materials. If you failed to comply, then they MIGHT file a lawsuit. But with the footage being old, non-profit, etc.. I think the chances of them persuing it are slim to none.

I'm not a legal advisor, and I DID NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express!

You're right, they most likely would not do anything, but because the chances of them pursuing it are slim to none makes it ok to us their stuff without their permission then? To put in in another light, since the chances of you pursuing someone using your storm video/images is slim to none, is it ok for anyone to use that?

No picking on ya dude, just that we all get up in arms when someone swipes a chasers video/photography, but we (by we I mean chasers on average) sometimes don't seem to apply those same standards when it comes to other copyrighted materials.

Chances are they might let you use it or archive it somewhere if you asked nicely too. Many stations SELL their archived tapes, sometimes for a pretty healthy sum too. I know our station it is $50 per copy for VHS for news stuff.

 

[Robert Dewey]

Good points David...

I just hate to see old video go to waste though... I was thinking that since nobody was profiting from it or calling it their own work that it wouldn't all that bad. That would be in contrast to people actually stealing the images, making claims that it's theirs, and selling it to movie producers for profit.

I just didn't see the harm in reposting other people's works (non-edited, original copyright holder, etc.). An example would be me putting a photo of one of your storms on my site and saying "David Drummond took this awesome photo"...

I definitely understand where you're coming from though, after reading your post, since they do try and sell the actual video, so I guess my advice would be to get permission first.