Surface Unsigned festival try “legal action” against Created in Birmingham

19 May 2008
By Jon Bounds

Created in Birmingham, where you’re most likely to find links to arty stuff rather than a row, posted about the Surface Unsigned ‘festival’ (an interminably drawn-out battle of the bands competition). After originally being fairly positive (and liking a couple of the bands) Danny Smith dug a little deeper and was unsettled by the rules of the competition — specifically that if bands didn’t sell enough tickets then they couldn’t progress to the next round.

Surface seem to have not enjoyed this bit of publicity, as Danny revealed on Friday last that they sent a faux-legal “take down request” to him (Pete Ashton has the text of the email here). Where as they could have cited Britain’s sue-friendly libel laws (they’d have been wrong in my opinion) and made it squeaky-bum time, they decided to talk about copyright (Danny quoted from the horse’s mouth, their rule-book). That’s where they’re quite wrong as far as I can see, as for the purposes of reporting quoting is considered fair-use.

Since they like rules so much, they’d better learn those of blogging and the law hadn’t they? I don’t have any respect for they way they’ve handled it at all.

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9 Responses to Surface Unsigned festival try “legal action” against Created in Birmingham

  1. [...] Birmingham: It’s Not Shit [...]

  2. CatherineBray on 19 May 2008 at 11:22 am

    Ooh, I do love a good bit of intrigue. My take here

  3. [...] A new bands “competition” that is making entrants buy/sell at least 25 tickets for their own gig at £6 each is trying to get the rather magnificent and award winning Created in Birmingham take down their review, where they quote said terms and conditions. Here they are, courtesy oh just about everyone in Birmingham blogland: [...]

  4. [...] Birmingham: It’s Not Shit [...]

  5. Suface Unsigned: to be avoided « Mabblog on 19 May 2008 at 5:19 pm

    [...] Birmingham: It’s Not Shit [...]

  6. [...] Then a lovely thing happened – the blogging community of Birmingham showed their support. As ever, BiNS and D’Log were quick on the [...]

  7. [...] Birmingham: It’s Not Shit [...]

  8. Surface Unsigned on 20 June 2009 at 11:42 pm

    [...] A new bands “competition” that is making entrants buy/sell at least 25 tickets for their own gig at £6 each is trying to get the rather magnificent and award winning Created in Birmingham take down their review, where they quote said terms and conditions. Here they are, courtesy oh just about everyone in Birmingham blogland: [...]

  9. [...] Birmingham: It’s Not Shit [...]

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