Comments on: Licensing and Fair Use https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706 2002-2015 Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:15:01 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 By: WJM https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6225 Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:15:01 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6225 It should be mentioned that although the book is
in the pubic domain, the movie still has valid
copyright.

Which does not enjoin me from publishing, copying, or creating derivatives of the book… Any more than my publication, copy, or derivative work would prevent someone else following me from doing the same.

Else, Charlton Heston owns the Ten Commandments.

]]> By: Joseph Pietro Riolo https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6224 Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:11:24 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6224 On the face value, I think that Hallmark was too
stupid to approach estate of Wells for the rights
to create a TV miniseries because Hallmark can use
the public domain work as the basis for the TV
show. With some further thought, I think that
Hallmark was scared of Paramount that if Hallmark
goes on and creates TV miniseries, it will be
sued by Paramount under trademark law and some
other legal theories.

It should be mentioned that although the book is
in the pubic domain, the movie still has valid
copyright.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.

]]> By: Branko Collin https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6223 Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:33:03 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6223 The decision of Paramount vs. Hallmark can be found through Google. It’s in some weird format, so use Google’s (copyright infringing?) HTML conversion to be able to read it.

I don’t understand anything about this decision, but that may be just my tiny non-lawyer brain interfering. It seems all the lawyers assembled in that court room only looked at the copyright law to find a definition for the word ‘movie’. My guess is nobody bothered to find out if anybody still owns the rights.

]]> By: Jardinero1 https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6222 Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:05:12 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6222 “Very few works of art, literature, or entertainment retain significant value 50 or 70 years after the death of their author”

My observation is that most works of art, literature, or entertainment NEVER have any significant economic value EVER to anyone. A few pieces(.000001 percent), through clever marketing, promotion and merchandising have economic value to certain merchandisers. Those same merchandisers are almost never the original creators of a work.

What I find tiring about all the copyright discussion is that both sides claim to be about the creators. Really, what’s it’s about is how to protect the business of entertainment as it’s currently incarnated. The business side can’t fathom a different business model and the reformers are doing everything they can to keep the media companies at bay and maintain the Sony Standard.

The whole regime is on the verge of collapse and nothing that either side is doing can stop it. What about the content creators? They will keep on creating; most of it will have know economic value whatsoever to anyone and some pieces through clever marketing, promotion and merchandising…

]]> By: David Carroll https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6221 Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:48:16 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6221 Your ideas about the costs of publishing older works may be overly guided by the case of books, and printed material in general. There is an extensive 3rd-party infrastructure (public, private & university libraries) for archiving and preserving books, and any well-preserved copy is just about as good as any other.

This isn’t true for all forms of copyrightable material, however. Most obviously, there are significant costs involved in permanently archiving film masters (or at least, photographic masters; it’s not clear yet how permanent preservation of digitally created audiovisual works will shake out.) There are also very significant fixed costs in duplicating film masters, transferring them to VHS (telecining) and encoding them into a digital format.

Given these differences in costs, might it make sense for there to be differing copyright periods for different media? Analog films might need a very long period, with printed material somewhere in the middle and software losing its copyright, say, 15 to 20 years after its creator stops maintaining it?

]]> By: WJM https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6220 Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:28:33 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6220 Nemo dat quod non habet

The War of the Worlds is PD in the U.S. It was in fact one of the earliest texts in Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/36

]]> By: Chuck Ivy https://archives.lessig.org/?p=2706#comment-6219 Mon, 23 Aug 2004 14:51:44 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2004/08/licensing_and_fair_use.html#comment-6219 My concern is contract law trumping copyright law. My understanding is that HG Wells “War of the Worlds” by all rights should be in the public domain. First published in 1898; the author died in 1946. Life of the author plus 50 would have it go public in 1996, and the Bono Act didn’t kick in until 1998. (Was it retroactive?)

To complicate matters, Wells’s heirs signed a deal with Paramount in 1951 granting exclusive motion picture rights. This contract was upheld in 2002 by the Manhattan Supreme Court when Hallmark wanted to do a TV miniseries based on the book.

So my question is, if the original book is, in fact, in the public domain, how can any company claim exclusive film rights to it?

]]>