[WRC] Croatia Rally 2023

[AnttiL]

Citation needed? according to which law in Croatia, or any other country where WRC happens??



You can stand on any land that is public or private and is not leased by the organizer without a ticket. Just like how you can watch a football match from your balcony if theres a clear line of sight to the field. organizers of any event have every right to try to obstruct the vision of anyone not paying, but they cant force you to look the other way if theres no such obstruction

It's more about content copyrights. Similarly you could record a song from the radio, which is free for everyone to listen, and put the recording onto youtube, and the artist's label could have it taken down.

[ouvreur]

It's a question of broadcast rights. Of course nobody can make you stop looking at an event on the day, or delete any footage or photographs you make on your own devices. It's yours, and you can watch it back a million times, and there's practically nothing they can do about it.

However, the moment you broadcast it in some way (for example, upload it to YouTube or social media), you're at the mercy of the owner of the broadcast rights.

Obviously, in the majority of cases, it's in the interest of the rights owner to leave any amateur footage of sports events online. More eyes on the product isn't a bad thing most of the time. It's only when that content causes them a problem (reputation / image-wise, or costing them money) that they'll take action against it.

OT - movies / TV shows / music area bit different, and studios / record labels tend to intervene very quickly, since the thing being uploaded and shared is the product itself, and every unlicensed broadcast effectively costs them money.

[the sniper]

Glad we have so many legal experts on here that know better than pesky WRC Promotor's legal team.

I don't think we know better than them, I just doubt their position would hold up in court universally, but it doesn't hurt them to try, though I imagine it's why they wouldn't try it too often. I think they'd know it's almost inconceivable that anybody would take them all the way to challenging their position in court, so they haven't really got anything to lose. Even if someone paid to go down that road, which nobody would at least on financial grounds, WRC Promoter could easily settle any odd case short of going to court, even likely just by relinquishing their claim on that individual's footage. If the law wasn't open to interpretation, there'd be a lot less lawyers in work...

Spectators agree by attending.

If you take footage of a McDonald's from the road, does McDonald's own that footage and have the right to stop it being distributed, because it features their IP? Particularly if the footage was actually being taken of a fight taking place on public or someone else's private land outside, particularly if being used for non-profit or reporting purposes and the McDonald's just happened to be in the background?

As a competitor you are not allowed to share any of your own in-car footage you take on social media etc. But you can pay them €1,750 to allow it if you want (might have changed for 2023), but that includes any footage they get of you (if the cameramen hang around that long).

Which is clearly entirely different to what was being discussed and I imagine they're well within their rights to hold you to something that you'll have signed by entering the event. Though I imagine they'd do everything possible to settle even that short of court, just in case it doesn't go their way.

It's more about content copyrights. Similarly you could record a song from the radio, which is free for everyone to listen, and put the recording onto youtube, and the artist's label could have it taken down.

I think redistributing a song, it's content having been written, performed, recorded, engineered/produced and distributed by the owner of the IP itself, is a far different case than a piece of self produced original content that happens to feature someone else's IP in a public place, to be fair.

I agree with Antti though that there isn't really much point in arguing about the rights and wrongs of it, as they don't regularly claim footage and they'll never get to court, so we won't get a definitive answer either way.