Post by Lord Fickle on Aug 9, 2023 12:13:38 GMT
As some of you who have been with us since the beginning will know, our rules concerning the sharing of official or otherwise copyrighted materials have evolved since the forum started. These restrictions are in place to protect the integrity of the forum and to ensure its longevity, as frequent breaches of copyright laws could result in the forum being closed.
Forum staff all have busy lives outside of here, and we were finding it a struggle fully assessing each download link on a case by case basis, therefore, we introduced a blanket ban on the sharing of all copyrighted materials, as this seemed the only fair and consistent way to manage the situation.
One of the more contentious issues with this overall policy concerns TV broadcast media, and we have had many discussions behind the scenes relating to this. Up to now, anything that has been broadcast on air, in any country, has been considered copyrighted, and therefore not permitted to be shared by direct download links, such as Mega, etc. We have now reviewed this policy and we feel that under certain circumstances, at the discretion of forum staff, some TV broadcast media may be shared, as long as it meets the following criteria:
1. The broadcast media to be shared must be no less than 30 years old, and should be from the original broadcast, ie, for example, you cannot use material from more recent documentaries on the basis of the age of the footage.
2. The broadcast media to be shared must never have been officially commercially released, either by the broadcaster, or by Queen Productions, or in any other commercial context or format. However, in an exception to this, we feel that TV broadcast media released on unofficial DVDs, etc, should be exempt from this rule, and therefore this media may be freely shared among our community, providing it complies with Rule 1.
3. The broadcast media to be shared may not contain any more than a few seconds of clips of material that has been officially released - ie, if an unreleased TV interview contains a few seconds of an official concert recording, or a short clip from a promo video, this should be OK but it must not contain complete versions of songs.
As always, forum staff reserve the right to remove any download links which do not comply with the above, or with our general rules. This may be at our discretion or by request of the copyright holder. Any decisions made by forum staff will be final.
Forum staff all have busy lives outside of here, and we were finding it a struggle fully assessing each download link on a case by case basis, therefore, we introduced a blanket ban on the sharing of all copyrighted materials, as this seemed the only fair and consistent way to manage the situation.
One of the more contentious issues with this overall policy concerns TV broadcast media, and we have had many discussions behind the scenes relating to this. Up to now, anything that has been broadcast on air, in any country, has been considered copyrighted, and therefore not permitted to be shared by direct download links, such as Mega, etc. We have now reviewed this policy and we feel that under certain circumstances, at the discretion of forum staff, some TV broadcast media may be shared, as long as it meets the following criteria:
1. The broadcast media to be shared must be no less than 30 years old, and should be from the original broadcast, ie, for example, you cannot use material from more recent documentaries on the basis of the age of the footage.
2. The broadcast media to be shared must never have been officially commercially released, either by the broadcaster, or by Queen Productions, or in any other commercial context or format. However, in an exception to this, we feel that TV broadcast media released on unofficial DVDs, etc, should be exempt from this rule, and therefore this media may be freely shared among our community, providing it complies with Rule 1.
3. The broadcast media to be shared may not contain any more than a few seconds of clips of material that has been officially released - ie, if an unreleased TV interview contains a few seconds of an official concert recording, or a short clip from a promo video, this should be OK but it must not contain complete versions of songs.
As always, forum staff reserve the right to remove any download links which do not comply with the above, or with our general rules. This may be at our discretion or by request of the copyright holder. Any decisions made by forum staff will be final.