![]() ![]() Plus, Kinnes did not attend the festival and therefore did not agree to AEG’s ticket terms. Of course, the policy is rarely enforced, as demonstrated by the 450 Frank Ocean videos Kinnes was able to easily download from the internet. Per AEG’s festival ticket terms, “No one may transmit, broadcast, or communicate any live audio or audiovisual images from the Event site without the Event producer’s prior written permission.” This means even posting to social media a 30-second video of your favorite band playing the Sahara tent could earn you a copyright takedown order. But legal experts say AEG could still make a trademark dilution claim even if Kinnes is not held liable for infringement - an idea the company alludes to in the letter: “The contents of your social media posts, use of our Festival name, use of our Festival content, and other circumstances clearly indicate that you are using the Intellectual Property with intent to trade on the Festival’s name and reputation.” Attorneys say even sharing or promoting links to re-uploaded versions of his video could potentially land Kinnes in legal trouble for contributory infringement. For that reason, he says may have a fair use defense. After all, copyright protects any original form of expression that is fixed in a tangible medium.īut while the cease and desist letter warns, “You cannot use our logo, our artwork, our imagery, or any of our other intellectual property for your own commercial benefit,” Kinnes says he is not making any money off of his concert film, and he never expected to. “Essentially, claims are pretty frivolous and almost completely baseless.”īut the copyright and intellectual property laws surrounding Kinnes’ film are actually quite murky, as there are many layers of copyright interests at play, including but not limited to Ocean’s music and lyrics, the graphics and video elements, the festival’s signage and trademarks, the people who took the videos and the social media platforms to which they uploaded them. “I’m just combining what’s already publicly available,” Kinnes says of the film. He estimates that he downloaded 450 videos from 300 different concertgoers, and ended up using about 150 for the edit. After sending the two clearest audio files he could find of the set to a sound engineer, who fused the two files into one clean recording, Kinnes then stitched together hundreds of videos he found on the internet. Kinnes says he spent 80 hours editing the film on DaVinci Resolve. But despite the company’s demand that he “take all actions necessary to preclude it from appearing under a different URL,” Kinnes is confident that “the video is going to be online forever,” as “hundreds of people were able to download it before everything got shut down, and those people are re-uploading it.” ![]() After AEG demanded that he remove all references to Coachella from his website and all social media accounts, Kinnes did, in fact, delete some tweets and scrub the video from his online channels. I don’t know if I should tell that to a reporter… but it deserves to exist online.” ![]() “I will continue to upload it in places that legal team will not be able to find. “I’m not concerned with any legal repercussions because I do not plan on making a single penny from it,” Kinnes told Variety in an interview prior to receiving the cease and desist. (Those links have since been removed from Kinnes’ site, which now includes a disclaimer that the film is “currently unavailable to the public.”) But thanks to external links on Kinnes’ website directing to sites such as Google Drive and Dropbox, people were still able to watch and download the unofficial concert film for free. Kinnes’ 2023 film, which is the most definitive and high-quality recording available of the much-discussed Coachella performance, was quickly taken off YouTube due to a report filed by third-party copyright holder Rico Management. Kinnes made a similar project in 2017 by compiling found footage of Ocean’s show at the now-defunct FYF Fest, inspired by Beastie Boys’ experimental 2006 concert doc “Awesome I Fuckin’ Shot That!,” which merged video captured by members of its audience. Kinnes, a 26-year-old lead editor at Simone Films, decided to make his concert film after YouTube announced just hours before Ocean went onstage that the set would not be included as part of the official Coachella live stream, disappointing millions of fans at home hoping to watch the hermetic R&B star’s first live performance in six years. writes, “Anything short of full compliance with this demand will lead to the initiation of immediate formal legal action.” AEG also owns Coachella promoter Goldenvoice. In the letter, obtained by Variety, the Coachella parent corp. ![]()
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