IANAL, for sure. On a couple of occasions I have found some of my machinima videos being used in television and web newscasts about Second Life or politics. Much of my work is licensed under a Creative Commons non-commercial / sharealike / attribution 2.0 license. So I have no major problem with my videos being used for various purposes. At the same time, I like to be recognized for doing the work cause that’s just fair.
I had assumed that a news program has to credit me if they re-broadcast some video that I produced. However it occurs to me that this might fall under the Fair Use Doctrine, particularly if they are using a tiny portion of the video in their broadcast. Am I within my rights to ask a media source to credit me if they are taking a snippet of my video and airing it on their program? Any insight from IP lawyers or others with experience with this is much appreciated.
Ask yourself this: when was the last time the same media outlet ran a clip from any Hollywood media *without* a tagline indicating where it came from? Sounds to me like you deserve the same treatment — if not by a matter of law, then by a matter of corporate policy.
The stickier question is enforcement: next time it happens, what do you do? I don’t know that a lawsuit is particularly effective here, unless you have $100,000 and no idea what to do with it. Perhaps enlisting coverage in an alt-weekly?