New High Quality Sample Version of SMGAD at US Festival Released by Rights Holder

[VHscraps]

I thought the band had the rights. VH was pretty controlling about their creative/video back then. And are pretty much the only band from this show that doesn't have a DVD out of this. Just figured the band was blocking it?!?

I kinda think they probably never owned the rights. But on the other hand, they may have some control over things like commercial video/DVD releases.

I know a lot of footage of the other acts on the bill that day has cropped up, but I wonder if they had different contractual deals regarding footage and who owned what was filmed, than the headliners did? I don't think there has been official video/DVD of The Clash and Bowie - like VH, there are bits of The Clash on youtube, taken from the TV broadcast.

Around '84 I remember Ed saying they were contracted to deliver an edited version of the gig for TV broadcast, which is one thing that held up the recording of '1984', and it was something they never wanted to do - but they owed it to the Festival organisers. i.e., the impression being that this was part of the deal with the Unuson Corporation (who were the legal entity financing the festival), and that they probably had the rights to whatever was filmed that day. They were paying ludicrous sums of money, so it might have been part of the deal - "we give you $1.5m, and we get to show the gig on TV"??

Ed also said that the job of editing was done by "Alex and the lighting guy" (Pete Angelus, presumably) which, to me, makes it sound like they saw it as a throwaway concert vid that might, over time, just vanish!

[VHscraps]

I don't know anything about this, really ... but let's suppose the footage was owned by Wozniak's Unuson Corp, or they did a deal with a broadcaster in return for some much needed cash (the Festival was way over budget from the start, if you read Wozniak's autobiography). In other words, the question of the ownership of the footage is probably complicated by deals that it is difficult now to find out about.

And, when that Unuson Corp went bust, what would have happened to any assets they owned, possibly including rights over Us Festival footage?

I figure that fans of the Clash are in a similar position of wondering why this has never surfaced when everyone knows the gig was filmed, and as it happens I just found a thread about this very same topic on a Clash forum.

LINK HERE

There are people on there posting about this new Historic Films cache, and the ownership of the Clash footage seems to be a mystery as well.

[VHscraps]

After some more digging, it seems that Glenn Aveni of Icon TV (makers of music documentaries) purchased distribution rights for the Us Festival footage of ... The Clash. The Historic Films materials - according to what is being said on the Clash Forum - is just a cleaner version of something, an old Betamax maybe, but probably not the actual source footage. And HERE, near the bottom of the thread, someone states that the material was bought by this Glenn Aveni dude.

Maybe this Glenn Aveni has a distribution deal to handle all the Us Fest leftovers? Icon TV have a Facebook page - https://en-gb.facebook.com/ICONTVMusic - maybe someone on here who has a FB account can post a question about the VH footage?

But, further to that ... more confusion - or is it clarity (!) - some more knowledgeable sounding guy on the Clash Forum says these interesting things:

Icon TV Music is a distributor and outsource production house. It says so in plain English on their company's website. They contract out to media companies for footage, package it, and distribute either direct-to-video or for network rebroadcast. The US Fest sampler that ran on Starz with the SISOSIG clip is typical of their work and the work of a zillion of these outfits. They serve a useful purpose being the go-between from a footage rights-holder to an interested party who wants to do something with the footage. They work with a stable of clients on the rights-holder side and contractors on the production side, then funnel the distribution. They do not own The Clash footage. Nor do they own The Police, Elvis, Les Paul, or ANY of the footage on some of their quickie rock documentaries. They are not copyright-hoarding billionaires. They don't have to be, because that's not what a distribution house does. It's one officer with a production background, one agent, and a couple of sales/marketing people on their whole payroll. They transact so other parties don't have to.

If Woz outright sold the ownership rights to Unuson's whole stock of US Festival band footage that would've been big news unto itself because of the number of big rock acts involved, number of total parties affected, large sum of money exchanged, and sheer unusualness of ceding that large a bloc of valuable IP to a small distribution middleman. Cutting an exclusive distro rights deal happens every fucking day in film/TV and doesn't make the papers. It's not an ownership control deal, it's distribution control deal...totally different things, and the latter infinitesimally less important for who's making the $$$ and wielding the ultimate control. Unless your source was utterly explicit about it being the former (speaking of evidence?)...it's the latter.

And ...

Wozniak was founder/CEO of Unuson, and still heads the dormant corporation. They controlled all Festival rights and licensing--broadcast, merch, concessions, trademarks, etc. The company is still extant because it has collected any post-Fest royalties for the last 28 years. They cut the original distribution deals because of the rights conveyed to them in all the Festival contracts, they have continued to cut distribution deals of said property when they've wanted, and they can continue to do so in perpetuity. There is no news of them transferring said rights to any party.

AND ...

That company's only been around since 2003. Unless Woz sold off the copyrights part-and-parcel to all sound and video--which makes no business sense whatsoever--they're just a contracted distributor. Unuson, the Woz-owned and still-extant holding company that managed the Festivals, retains all intellectual property rights. That includes any licensing or royalties. They may have contracted out the film/audio distro rights to Icon TV Music and other upkeep to lawyers and such because Unusom doesn't really do anything anymore on its own, but they (Woz) are the owner of it all and the one collecting any earned royalties. They're the party the musicians' contracts stated had the video/audio rights to the performances, and they were the licensee of the broadcast to Showtime for the telecast and Westwood One for the radio broadcast. If there's any money to be made, of course he's going to go through an exclusive distributor to manage those rights and royalties owed to him. Unuson has no in-house staff; there's no way for him to maximize the value of the asset himself by parceling off rights to that much band footage piecemeal to generally small-time independent parties who are not going to bid much. Cut a revenue-sharing deal with one distributor who does the negotiations and he controls the price point on his royalties.

I'm not making shit up...Briggy. This is how it works with any inactive IP asset in any medium. I deal with this all the time in my line of work securing photo rights for books. Usually with agencies distributing works from dead artists' estates. Most are accommodating, but it's no skin off their backs if they don't want to be. The profits are so small for this that Woz doesn't have a lot of motivation to release the material unless somebody is willing to pay a premium. Icon has probably earned back its modest investment in the distro rights from the recent Fest comp videos. While I'm sure they'd like to milk the rest it's not exactly costing them anything more to sit on the distro rights while Woz sits on his price point. It's an IP asset; IP assets have monetary value whether used or not.

If Sony can't/won't get them, it's probably because they're asking way too much. Which would be consistent with how Woz has treated nearly all footage of both festivals for 27 years. There's a reason why the DVD's for each act's full set are just videotape rips from the telecasts. That this hasn't changed in the 7 years he's had an outsourced distributor means...his asking price hasn't changed. Sony couldn't acquire the multi-tracks for this show for FHTE, either, pre-dating Icon TV's existence when it was just Unuson. That there's been no action in 12 years of increasing Clash profile since probably means Woz is holding firm.

[DrMaddVibe]

Von......you hit the nail perfectly
This was RAW, this was THE MIGHTY VAN FUCKIN HALEN
You had to be there to understand, release this UNFUCKINEDITED, sit down watch it and this band will still KNOCK your socks off 31 yrs later

They were pretty shitfaced the day I saw them open for the Rolling Stones at the Tangerine Bowl...Alex was so drunk they had roadies on each side of him propping him up because he'd fall over if they weren't there!!! didn't stop them from turning in a world class performance though! It's the MIGHTY Van Halen baybee...not Van Hagar!

[Von Halen]

The Clash fags have their own forum?

[DrMaddVibe]

The Clash fags have their own forum?

https://www.jackdanielsbottlesfilledwithtea.com

[fryingdutchman]

Don't you mean SGMAD, VA?

You dyslexic bastard! Don't you know how much we hang on every acronym around here?

[fryingdutchman]

Fucking awesome video by the way!

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Fucking awesome video by the way!

Hahahaha, just noticed that....

Somebody me get a doctor !!

[Seshmeister]

A Doctor Somebody Get Me.

[Von Halen]

A Doctor Somebody Get Me.

I don't know what the fuck that is, or what it has to do with this topic.

[PETE'S BROTHER]

I don't know what the fuck that is, or what it has to do with this topic.

read the thread title...

[Von Halen]

read the thread title...

I did. What does that creature have to do with the thread title?

[jhale667]

I did. What does that creature have to do with the thread title?

You seriously don't know who Yoda is?

[DrMaddVibe]

You seriously don't know who Yoda is?

One primer....coming up!