facebook.com/thinkballbrasil | thinkball.com.br
twitter.com/think_ball | instagram.com/think_ball
(i) the owner of the account is a soccer players’ career management agency, founded and based in Brazil;
(ii) according to the corporate object and the agreements concluded with our clients (soccer players), we have the right to explore their image, even non-commercially, making and upload some videos, focusing essentially on the athletes, in order to promote the interaction among them and their fans around the world;
(iii) those videos are all created by us, composed of only some frames, sometimes captured from different videos and compiled in just one, without any necessary connection among them, but just for the referred interaction among the players and fans;
(iv) the mentioned videos focus only on the players, never on the (whole) matches or competitions, i.e., never reaching, thus, any type of copyrights and their holders;
(v) the videos that the Vimeo moderator marked, which might end in the termination of the account, are totally noncommercial, with unquestionable informational intent;
(vi) the company and its employees/agents or clients do not receive any kind of revenues or profit from those videos;
(vii) such videos have a very few number of views, demonstrating their existence just for interaction of the players among their fans, apart from their noncommercial nature and that they do not compete at all with the full matches videos, which are watched by several millions of people and might belong to the alleged copyright holders;
(viii) the videos uploaded on our account do not compete at all with the live broadcasts, since they are published after a couple of days of their happening, besides the abovementioned difference of number of viewers among the videos published by Think Ball and the corresponding TV broadcasts;
(ix) following the ideas above, the referred videos, doubtless, are protected by the fair use doctrine (Copyright Act of 1976 – 17 U.S. Code § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use), as
a. the purpose and character of their use are absolutely noncommercial and nonprofit;
b. the nature of the videos uploaded by Think Ball, even though they might be copyrighted, is merely informative, contributing to reduce the distance among the company clients (soccer players) and their fans, bringing them closer, often eager for some news, especially considering that many of those athletes are playing overseas – situation that may hamper the fans to follow their idols;
c. the amount of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted works is infinitesimal, just some frames, all of them absolutely related to the players, never to the whole matches or championships – in other words, such videos do not constitute the heart of the respective works;
d. the use of the abovementioned videos does not affect the potential market for or value of the copyrighted works and causes no harm to their owners/holders, as such use is based on just some frames of the alleged copyrighted works, being always focused only on company’s player clients, without any commercial intention or purpose.
