OT: Sorry, yet another copyright red herring.

farss wrote on 12/30/2004, 4:04 PM
As some of you are no doubt aware there's quite a collection of movies and possibly audio titles as well whose copyright has expired. Some are making a quite legit business out of re-releasing these titles, pretty popular around this time of year as stocking stuffers, yes this is legit.
However, having seen these products, to be honest, the quality is anything but the best, after all there's little money in it and whoever once owned the copyright obviously didn't think the content worth the effort to look after.
Now the question is, if I do expend considerable resources to have these titles restored as best they can be, maybe even hunt down a 35mm print and pay quite a bit of money for new a telecine transfer and decent restoration, does MY work enjoy any protection?
I guess the issue would be that anyone else could rip off my work and claim they'd duplicated the process and I'd have a hard time (read expensive)proving otherwise.
Bob.

Comments

farss wrote on 12/31/2004, 3:12 PM
Shameless bump. really hoping someone has something worthwhile to say about this.
RichR wrote on 12/31/2004, 3:15 PM
How would you go about finding some of these films.
farss wrote on 12/31/2004, 4:26 PM
Best place is the Library of Congress. My associates have a man in LA who checks it all out, it's a pretty complicated business though and you need to be real careful, even when the copyright to the movie has expired the music may still be under copyright.
The L.O.C. is a great resource, you can download very good quality copies of movies that are now in the public domain, it's amazing some of the effort that used to go into what in some cases were basically home movies.
Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/31/2004, 4:36 PM
Prelinger Archives also has access to a bunch of this sort of thing, but I'm not sure what the value is in restoring it. I guess there will always be someone wanting it, but will the ROI of restoring be worth it? I'm sure there will be one or two nuggets in there...
farss wrote on 12/31/2004, 4:45 PM
SPOT,
a very good point and one I'm certainly factoring in!
On top of that I'd have to wonder how well the product would fare in the marketplace, given a choice of a dodgy copy of a movie for $5 or a lovingly restored one for $30 I think I already know which way the public would be voting.
But here's the thing, I've been offered a BIG collection of 78 records. Now I know all the copyright legwork that needs to be done up front. The question though is if I find a gem or two that I can work on legally does MY work enjoy any protection?
Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/31/2004, 9:40 PM
You can copyright your master/restored version, at least in the States. I don't know how that might fare in Australia. Here, if you wanted to clean it up and re-release, it's entirely yours at that point, so long as you don't pass yourself up as the author.
farss wrote on 1/1/2005, 12:36 AM
SPOT,
thanks and let me assure you, even if I couldn't pay those who originally did the work they'd sure as hell get their due credit, be they alive or not.
Bob.