What should I do?

[Saltine713]

A couple of days ago, I made a promotional video for a free app in the Android market, as the developer posted on their marketplace page asking for someone to make them a video. Since the app was free, I decided not to charge the developer any money.

The developer has since announced that they will now be charging money for this app in the near future. Since the 2 days have gone by since I made the video, it has gotten 10,000 views and from the little chart on the marketplace, their downloads have increased.

Would it be fair to ask for a percentage when they start charging money for their app? I would think so, as they are making money off of the video he made for their promotion.

What do you think? And how should I go about asking them?

 

[cpht]

It sounds like you made the video and gave it to the dev. I don't think you're entitled to much from him. You could contact him and offer more vids or other services for a fee. You could also congratulate him on his success and mention that you hope your video helped. Maybe he'll throw something your way.

 

[Saltine713]

Well the person put an open request up to email them asking for a video. My brother responded and they talked about what they wanted in the video.

Then the dev. agreed to put it on his marketplace. However, this was when the app was free. If the dev. makes money off of the app and is still using the video on their marketplace page, then that would be considered using the video for advertisement purposes.

Also, would be considered using the video out of context, as the agreement was based on a free app, not a paid one.

 

[rainor94]

Out of curiosity for what app did you make the video? Or do you have a simple link for the video?

 

[Saltine713]

Skyvi

 

[mikabuc]

I don't think you have any justification for asking for royalties from said video really.
It doesn't sound like you had made any sort of legally binding agreement. Verbal doesn't mean anything...
If you gave me an old futon because you didn't want to deal with moving/storing it and I drove over, loaded it up in my truck, and brought it home...
I'd feel like I could do whatever I wanted with it, like sell it on Craigslist for $200...

I'd just let that one go, and see if you could work something else out, like a couple of free app downloads or something, or try to do what cpht suggested...

I feel ya though, I agree that you did kinda get burned on this one. You were trying to help someone out, and they kinda took advatage of your genorosity...
You always gotta C.Y.A. dude.

 

[Hrethgir]

Developer asks for someone to make a video for them for free.
You decide to make the video for free and give it to them.

You really have no leg to stand on. If you had agreed in the beginning that you were ONLY making the video for free because it was a free app, then maybe. But even then, free apps still bring in money from ads. Should have asked about the money thing up front, it's too late now.

 

[Rovers]

Yep, too late.

 

[Saltine713]

Developer asks for someone to make a video for them for free.
You decide to make the video for free and give it to them.

You really have no leg to stand on. If you had agreed in the beginning that you were ONLY making the video for free because it was a free app, then maybe. But even then, free apps still bring in money from ads. Should have asked about the money thing up front, it's too late now.

That is exactly what I agreed upon.

 

[alostpacket]

Personally I might as for credit/thanks somewhere in the app listing and a link to your website. Then just chalk it up as a lesson learned.

When you do stuff for people it's always best to decide what you value your work at ahead of time. Things will change, but it you have your own value set, then you wont feel cheated.

I'd say this dev likely had plans to go paid, otherwise they wouldn't need a video.

But I think since the deed is done, it's better for you in the end to be friendly and just ask for some credit & congratulate him.

Then next time around, you will have this experience to fall back on when deciding whether or not to accept free work.

You should also consider, reading up on Creative Commons licenses. One thing you could do next time, is give a license to use the video under a CC "noncommercial" "must attribute" license.

Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic — CC BY-NC-SA 2.0


(Also I moved this thread to the Android Lounge)

 

[Saltine713]

The video was labeled under the CC license. But yeah, I guess so. I could nicely ask and hope for the best.

 

[Clevo89]

As the maker of the video you still have some creative rights under the copyright laws. If you let it go under the Creative Commons license agreement and not gave it to the to Skyvi directly I believe you can change the CC standard to reflect not for use by commercial org for profit.

If they change from free to charged app then they have changed the terms of contract (verbal or written) and you have every right to reclaim your created work.

If they provided some video for the production then they also have some Underlying Rights to that provided video. It's not clear if you shot all the video yourself of the product (they still retain some underlying rights as it's footage of someone else's creative work)

It's complicated but in this instance like mentioned before take it as a learning lesson. Next time put things in writing even with the intent of giving it away for free.

 

[Saltine713]

Everything I did myself, they did not help in any way. I also made the music in the background.