Documentary Frustration (permits)

This has been probably the most interesting thread I've read here on dvxuser in my three months of membership. I've had to deal with release forms a lot lately doing promo work for a college campus and as an institution we've made several adjustments to our protocol. First, if we do a sit-down/one-on-one interview with someone, then we do a release form. Period. Even if its an employee of the college. We also have a clause written into our student and employee contracts that basically states that by signing the contract, they are giving us (the college) full permission to use their likeness as we see fit in any promotional/documentary/narrative multimedia that we produce. However, even with this clause, we still get individual release forms for main subjects in a production. A couple years ago we had a student who tended to be a little anal about lots of things and he decided to pick a battle with other students who were shooting pictures of our campus for their photography classes. His argument was that their photos included him walking between buildings and since they didn't pay him for using his likeness, he would sue them if they didn't delete the files on their cameras. It was ruled in-house that he was in a "public" place and so he couldn't make those demands on his fellow students. We currently have a student here (even plays on our soccer team) who does not allow the school to distribute his name anywhere--not even on a team roster or campus newspaper sports story. Instead he's got an alias which he requires the school to use.

All that is to say--it's really convoluted and we've decided to take the time to protect ourselves and do the extra steps necessary to cover ourselves.
 
No vote from me. I'm tired of this overcautious paranoia.

There are actually some buildings and public artwork that have been copyrighted and/or trademarked, and the owners of those entities have successfully defended those rights against being used in films without permission or payment...even if shot from a public vantage point. I believe that the Picasso in Daley Plaza in Chicago may be one of those. So shooting on a public street is not necessarily clear of copyright or trademark infringment problems.
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This is untrue. They tried to sell the "photography rights" by establishing a no-photography perimeter -- and failed because buildings cannot be copyrighted or trademarked.
 
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