Doritos can say whatever they want, that doesn’t make it so. They could say that by entering the contest you have to give them your first born child, but that would never hold up. The terms you just quoted would also never hold up. Doritos has no proof that the person who clicked “ok” to their terms and conditions was the person who owned the copyright to the submission. And only a copyright holder can authorize that type of use. That’s why copyrights can only be transferred with signed agreements. Doritos would also need to get releases from everyone who appears in the spot before they could air it.

“BY ENTERING THIS CONTEST AND UPLOADING YOUR SUBMISSION, YOU IRREVOCABLY GRANT TO SPONSOR AND ITS AGENTS THE UNCONDITIONAL AND PERPETUAL RIGHT TO POST, DISPLAY, PUBLISH, USE, ADAPT, EDIT AND/OR MODIFY SUCH SUBMISSION IN ANY WAY, IN ANY AND ALL MEDIA, FOR ANY PURPOSE, WITHOUT LIMITATION, AND WITHOUT CONSIDERATION TO YOU.”

sucks doesn’t it!

The finalists are now posted at crashthesuperbowl.com. The rules stated that voting would actually start at midnight central time. So their clock was off.

Thanks for the legal advice. I think you’re probably right. A few months ago I got an angry, profane message from an “anonymous” filmmaker who didn’t like what I had to say. He went so far as to pretend to be another, disgruntled filmmaker. I had his IP address and location in my weblogs and it was clear who made the post. So I blogged about it and called him out. The guy wrote me as cool as could be and denied everything. He said he thought it was pretty funny but he was not the guy who made fun of the penis size of our cartoon mascot “Beardy.” He flat out lied when accused.

I set him the web tracking info and there was no denying he was the annonymous commenter. He begged for forgiveness and apolgized for being a liar. But it was obvious that he wasn’t sorry. He was just worried about my posts about him showing up in google results for his name. He sank so low that he used God and Christ to try and guilt me into forgiving him. (I removed his name from my posts) Oh! Ironically, the reason he sent me his nasty e-mail was because I called him out on an act of plagiarism! So if someone is going to steal an idea, they certainly deny it until the bitter end.

Ironically, one of the finalists did e-mail me today and offered to tell me the whole list. I thought it was a joke but there they are in the top 6! I need to pick better sources.

2. To comment of what ellen said, the last thing you want to do is contact the people who made the commercial. Obviously they will deny it if you contact them! Anyone would. So you gain nothing by contacting them and asking them. In fact, you might loose legal ground. Don’t try and deal with this yourself. This is a serious legal matter. A million dollars are at stake. You already did one very smart thing. You contacted doritos before the finalists were announced and warned them. Now, they are culpable if their was intellectual property theft. Your next step is to get a lawyer. You can’t get the truth on your own but a lawyer can help you.

3. Great site by the way.