(***DEFINITELY CHECK THIS OUT NOW**) Austin Live Theatre: Fan-Produced DS webseries beginning in January

[borgosi]

The sad thing is that within 24hrs after the movie is released I can go buy it on DVD for under $10.00 and it'll be as good as any DVD you'd buy in a store.

You see the powers that be can ask a fan to stop and they will because they want the best for DS. Those who are not fans will sell they illegal copies and won't even slow down. They don't care and they won't start.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Actually, the sadder thing about DVDs like that is that the people who buy them know they're breaking law but, in plain English, the don't give a shit. Not to mention that they don't give a shit that they're depriving everyone involved with the films of their rightful royalties from the actual DVD releases.

If the buyers didn't purchase the illegal DVDs, the sellers wouldn't have any customers. So, every buyer is just as much to blame as every seller. Probably even more so because buyers are supporting the sellers by buying their illegal products...

[Nancy]

Well said, MB.

[borgosi]

You see that's the thing about public domain, you fail to fill out the right sheet of paper or you fill it out wrong and it doesn't matter if everyone in the world knows you put all the work into creating it. It's then legal for someone to do whatever they want with it. It happed to the Stoker family with Dracula and to Romero with Night of the Living Dead. Everyone knew who's work they were but paperwork mistakes caused them to loose their copywrites. Legal or not that's wrong.

IMHO if a fan of Romero has a choice of buying a copy of Night... that Romero will profit from and one that he won't, they should always buy the one that Romero will profit from. If someone from the Stoker family does a forward to Darcula a fan should buy that release because the Stoker family will then be able to profit from Stoker's work. If anyone were to change one of these classics so that they can profit from Romero's or Stoker's hard work they would be wrong but within the law. I would not want to support them just like I don't want to support someone selling illegal DVDs.

If I support Seth Grahame-Smith I fill like I'm supporting someone that, were it not for one piece of paper, would be selling someone else's work that he had made slight changes to without them wanting him to. If the paperwork got screwed up on the release of the new movie, would you then be ok with those bootleg DVDS? I wouldn't be.

[borgosi]

Did you know that at one time it was legal to hunt and sale the skins of red people in America. That's where the term "redskins" comes from. It was still legal to kill them until the early 1900s.
Did you know that rape was legal in America if your skin wasn't white?
Did you know it was illegal to have sex in any way other than the missionary position? You could be sent to jail for it even if you were legally married. This was still the law in some states in the 1990s!

Again, just because it's the law doesn't make it right.

[Nancy]

I understand the principle you are talking about but in essence you are comparing apples and oranges in terms of how a law affects people. 

The public domain issues your talking about occur basically because the author is long since dead and heirs are not identified or have made claim to the property in question.  If an author has been dead over a hundred years their work is in the public domain just because it's no longer reasonable or possible to identify receivers of copyright payments.  Once a spouse or immediate family have passed on, and a hundred years pass, it seems a little silly to try and make payments on property when the author can't even enjoy or receive payment.  Dan Curtis had children and other reps with long standing vested interest in the DS property.

Screenwriters and others who adapt stories long since in the public domain usually acknowledge the source by saying their new work is based on a story by so and so, etc.   They aren't doing anything wrong or immoral.  They aren't alone in building upon an existing story, adding and twisting around things to create a new work/new idea.  Existing ideas provide plenty of fuel for the fertile imagination, to seize upon the first idea and add another idea to that, and this is true in any business in the world not just the entertainment business. 

I do also have to say that the legal issues you pointed out are horrible wrongs perpetrated on fellow human beings, devastating crimes against humanity.  In this particular topic, we are talking about a freaking movie.  That's all it is - a movie. If it's an awful movie, fandom will continue.  If it's a great movie, fandom will continue.  Lives will not be ruined in either case. 

If indeed the DS fandom ended tomorrow and there was no where to discuss it and no way to by anything related to DS, the world would go on and I think most of us would manage to live the rest of our lives rather happily.  I believe the focus should be on what fans CAN do creatively to celebrate DS and not what they can't do.  Fanzines like the one Taeylor is starting is a good example.  He will undoubtedly be using DS photos and short stories based on existing characters but won't be bothered by DCP.  That kind of project is rarely ever bothered by those legal folks.   The people who make DS products available to fans have every right to decide what they want to see done with their property.  To bitch and moan about what they want to do with their own property is rather unseemly.  People who do that really don't have any right to complain, IMO. 

I guess this is going off topic somewhat so I'll rest my case now, lol.

Again, just because it's the law doesn't make it right.

[tragic bat]

I don't think anyone should be rewarded too much for 'allowing' fan-fiction; it will go on in the far corners of the internet whether they want it to or not.   And yes, I do think it is greedy for billionare warner brothers to take action to stop nonprofit youtube fan-films made by a few amatuers trying to have a good time.  They and the Curtis estate already made their money, and I don't think the massive corporate profits of Hollywood need to be protected in that way.   I also don't think I'm so much in agreement with everyone else that the descendants of an author or etc. should be enabled to live off the proceeds of their ancestors work and do nothing hundreds of years later; if it is moved into the public domain, no one should be profiting off of it at all.    When you release something into the public to that extent, and indeed make your money off the 'cult' status of a fan community, it doesn't only belong to you.  I'm sure that Richard O'brien doesn't consider Rocky Horror to 'belong' to him in the sense that he needs to stop all those damned people reinacting the play at midnight showings in order to protect his property.   Copyright practice, if not law, is changing irrevocably due to the internet; people can either work with it and succeed or work against it and fail.  

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Of course, in this particular case it really doesn't matter what any of us think because the Austin group's DS series is gone and for better or worse, depending on whether one is looking at it from DC's estate's POV or the POV of those of us who enjoyed it, the most likely scenario is that it won't be coming back...

[borgosi]

Nancy - George Romero made Night Of The Living Dead in 1968 and he is very much alive. He lost the copywrite on the film because the title was changed from Night Of The Flesh Eaters. He lost his copywrite because of where the copywrite sysblem was located. It was decided that only the title had a copywrite.

The Stoker family lost their copywrite while Bram's wife was still alive. Strange how that happened about the same time that Hollywood wanted to base a movie on it. It was also lost because of a paperwork error.

It may be the intent of the copywrite laws to allow people to enjoy something after the estate has passed that that isn't always how it works out.

I hope DCP makes enough money from this new movie to want to make many more.

Oh and keep in mind that when all of those other activites were legal most people were ok with them because it wasn't illegal. If Night of the Living Dead had been the only money making movie that Romero had ever made, it would have been life changing to loose the copywrite.

[David]

As far as I know, bootlegged DVDs on street corners look like crap and are often so out of focus as to be unwatchable.
Anyone stupid enough to buy one deserves to get ripped off.

[borgosi]

I know where you can buy bootleg DVD that are so good you can't tell they are bootlegs. I've tried turning people in for selling them but no one seems to care.

[borgosi]

tragic bat - so you're saying that if you created something that made enough money to take care of your kids and grandkids after you're gone, you'd be ok with the government taking it from them.

[tragic bat]

You're right MB, it is gone and I will try not to get too heated in my response.  

borgosi,  my statement was about whether descendants hundreds of years later should still be raking in vast amounts of wealth from their ancestors literary work by controlling the copyright, and no, I don't think they should.  I beleive in such things entering the public domain.   I also have always known bootleg releases of films still in theatres to be of terribly low quality, not a replacement for the real thing. 

[borgosi]

So if you wait long enough you should be able to take something that doesn't belong to you. I believe that time shouldn't make a crime legal. I believe that taking something that does not belong to me to be wrong and that the passage of time sould not change that. It makes no difference if it's a book, a song, a movie or a house. If a family shouldn't be able to own a book for hundreds of years why shouldn't that apply to a family home? Or anything else? You said descendants hundreds of years later shouldn't be able to profit from literary work, if it should apply to that why not everything?

Bootleg DVDs are only as good as the source. Some are low quality some are so good you can't tell they're bootlegs. I guess one reason not to buy them is that in most cases you don't know how good the copy is until you get it home.

[Lydia]

borgosi, are you saying that Shakespeare's works shouldn't necessarily be in the public domain?  I've got to give that some thought.