Documentary Wants To Use My Footage But Also Wants Copyright In Perpetuity

Location: Missouri, United States

Hello,

I am a long-time "urban explorer".

A while back, I recorded footage of a location (on the east coast US) and uploaded it to my youtube channel.

I was recently contacted by a household name cable TV channel about permission to use my footage in their documentary.

The release form I was sent would apparently grant them the copyright to my material basically until the end of time.

Here's the exact quote from the release form:

"Network shall own all rights, including copyright, in the Recordings and the results and proceeds of such Recordings. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, Producer shall forever have the right to use, and license others to use, the Recordings, in whole or in part, an unlimited number of times, in all languages, in any and all media (whether now known or hereafter devised) anywhere in the world, and in connection with the advertising, sale, promotion, marketing, merchandising, distribution, and any and all other types of exploitation of the Program. Producer shall have the right to refer to the Materials by their correct and/or their commonly recognized name(s). Producer shall have the right to edit the content and text of the Recordings in any manner or form, and I waive any right to inspect or approve of any use of the Recordings. "

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that this would also mean that they would effectively have copyright over the source material, including the video I already had up on youtube.

Any advice would be appreciated.

-

Before the release form, I was more than happy to oblige, without asking for payment*, as long as they included credit to me. They asked if end credits would be ok and I stated that I would prefer on-screen. Just some small, legible, text in the corner of the screen would suffice. But they haven't confirmed that the network would approve it and even the release form states that on-screen credit is subject to the network's approval.

*I do what I do because I like history, architecture and cool old stuff and I like documenting these things and sharing them with the world and I hate the idea of monetizing everything and locking up knowledge and history behind paywalls. As such, I have previously granted requests to reprint some of my photos in various books with my only request being credit to me. I'm generally happy to contribute to scholarly pursuits.

But this release form is a big red flag/no-go for me.

As far as I'm concerned, the actual rights to my work would cost a hell of a lot more than a vague possibility of on-screen credit. I assume they would never speak to me again after telling them the price I would place on such a demand and that's fine by me. But I'm curious if anyone out there has experience with such a situation and maybe negotiating something like this, in the off chance they might agree.