It’s almost that time of year again. From September 7-16, Toronto is taken over by celebrities and celebrity hounds, partying into the wee hours and clogging up Yorkville with their bling. Oh, and they show a few films as well.
I’ll be attending for the 12th year, though I’m only seeing ten films again. Without taking vacation time off work (which I’m saving for our trip to Slovenia just after the festival ends), ten is about the limit for me.
I was a little bit excited for about thirty seconds when I saw that the official TIFF web site is offering a feature called “Your Blogs”. That is, until I read part of the lengthy terms and conditions:
Uh, no thanks. Instead, I’ll be posting my reviews here as always, and cross-posting them to TIFFReviews, a site which has been covering the festival since 2004.
The complete film list was released yesterday, so now comes the hard job of deciding what to see and when to see it. If I’m careful, I might just be able to avoid anyone famous.
Yes, I was going to sign up too until the overreaching t&c changed my mind. In particular there is no need for TIFF to ask for a waiver of moral rights. (As set out in section 14.1 of the Copyright Act, moral rights include the right to be associated with the work as its author by name or by a pseudonym.) (http://canlii.org/ca/sta/c-42/sec14.1.html)
The amusing thing is, that although they have done their best to draft an airtight licence, the signup procedure provides no basis for assuming that the individual agreeing to the t&c is actually the owner of the blog. In other words, there is nothing to stop you from submitting somebody else’s blog to them, and nothing to stop someone else from submitting your blog.