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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

These "copyright rights" violations are becoming egregious. I recently had to sign an addendum to my apartment lease stipulating that the management company owned my "copyright" and could broadcast, on the Internet, all security footage of me in the building.

What action should I take to get this clause removed? I don't care if they share the tapes with the police when they have a warrant. I do care if they end up on the Internet. I want to walk to my apartment, not have my life broadcast to strangers.

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You could attempt to direct a bunch of publicity towards the fact that the management company wants to broadcast the security footage on the Internet:

* 'Anonymously' put up a bunch of papers around your apartment complex to direct residents' attention to those terms in the lease contract.

* Notify the local media about it.

* Discuss the idea that someone could use it to determine when you are/aren't home in order to rob/assault you.

* If you want to fight dirty you could bring up the 'protect the children' angle and talk about online predators watching your children.

> 'Anonymously' put up a bunch of papers around your apartment complex to direct residents' attention to those terms in the lease contract.

Kind of hard, when they have security cameras.

See that anonymously is in quotes. This probably means to use a pseudonym like "A Concerned Resident" on the letter.

No rule against putting up fliers, though.

Haha. I once received a threatening phone call from the son of my landlord for posting a flier (protesting an illegal mid-lease rent increase) in the lobby of the apartment building where I lived, or as he called it, "his place of business."

What came of that?

Most likely they "broadcast" the footage over the internet to a security company. There may be issues involving consent to record in your state that your apartment owners are trying to make sure they don't get in trouble over. If you are concerned over where the video ends up or what safeguards are in place to protect your privacy talk to the owners.

Have you asked for clarification on the terms of the addendum?

I'm guessing the situation is that networkable cameras have been installed and that they're being accessed remotely by management or a security company they hired.

I'm also actually surprised they even bothered to notify you and have the addendum. It'd be nice if they just said that or offered that as an immediate explanation. But they probably just got boilerplate text designed to be as broad as possible. Nothing necessarily sinister but lazy/cheap.

  > Nothing necessarily sinister but lazy/cheap.

This attitude really irks me sometimes. Once you've signed off on that overly broad language, do you think that the management company wouldn't take full advantage of it if there was a way for them to profit off of it?

Lazy/cheap is no excuse for attempting to pool as much power in your corner as possible 'just in case.' Once you've gained all of that power 'just for defensive purposes' there is nothing to stop you from using it offensively.

It's ok to be evil, as long as it's just because it was too darn much work to be good.

It's quite possible that they could use the footage to help find assailants or other criminals, where the footage of you might pose a violation of the law.

What I'm saying is that there's not necessarily any shady motive behind it. The problem is - and has always been - how to determine this.

They are required to give up security footage to law enforcement anyway during an investigation.

How is this copyright clause even helpful in that case? I'm guess it's not.

Model releases are not necessary for the use of recordings as evidence.

But they [releases] are required to sell the video to 'clip show' producers (exemplars "Caught on Tape", "Outrageous Videos", Etc). One of the complaints in the 'stupid person falls in the fountain' case was that the security camera footage did not include a release.

If your lease was not up for renewal, you probably could have gotten out of your lease by refusing to sign it. Refusing to sign it and taking your business elsewhere is one of the best ways to let them know that you won't stand for this type of thing. And then spread the word to anyone that will listen about why you don't recommend doing business with that establishment.

Refusing to sign it and taking your business elsewhere is one of the best ways to let them know that you won't stand for this type of thing.

Although this is probably the best way to let them know, unfortunately real world constraints often mean that there are a very small percentage of people who are in a position to truly have a choice between not renewing their lease (in this example) and renewing it. Therefore, a company who is only being affected by those people who don't like their policy and have a choice to follow through will likely receive very little feedback. This is why, I feel, although on paper it works, in real life unfortunately one must insist on other ways to get our point across, including the ones mentioned in replies to the OP.

...which brings this subthread back on topic to the growing practice of vendors attaching gag clauses to service contracts.

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