Surface Unsigned Festival Addendum

In March I posted a short post on CrIB about the Surface Unsigned festival. Following questions in the comments I extended this post with some speculation about an item in their terms and conditions. CiB was contacted by someone at Surface demanding the post be removed from the internet citing the printing of an excerpt of their terms and conditions as copyright infringement. We’ve replaced the quote with a paraphrased version but the post itself will stay up.

21 Comments

  4. keri davies

    This legal threat is highly spurious for several reasons.

    1. I can’t find the “festival’s” terms and conditions, but I expect they are much longer than this one paragraph. Copyright law only applies when you quote a “substantial part” of a work.

    2. Even if this was the entire terms and conditions, there is a very strong defence case for this being fair comment on a matter of public interest.

    3. So copyright doesn’t come into it.

    4. Even if Surface has a non-disclosure agreement with the bands taking part, there is no such contractual relationship between Surface and CiB.

    What an own goal by Surface. Instead of engaging with the issue, explaining what the money is used for, how much it costs to administer the competition, pointing to the success stories large and small of bands who have taken part, they are now going to be branded as exploitative cowards who don’t understand the blogosphere or the law.

  7. i notice there is no real-world contact information on the surface website anywhere. is that not mandatory these days for businesses ?

  15. Another thing that concerns me about this is how they handle the text voting (details on the banner at the bottom of the http://www.surfaceunsigned.co.uk/presspage.html). If a band does not qualify by not bringing 25 fans, what happens to any text votes for that band? Voters have to pay £1 plus network fee for each vote. Is this announced at the end of the gig before voting starts “You can vote for BandA, BandC and BandD, but not BandB”. This seems unlikely.

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