If only there was a website you could go to ask questions of a general nature.
I’ve been in libraries, both public and private, in the US, Germany, the UK, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and even the People’s Republic of China. Every single one of them had a copy machine for patrons’ use. Every single copy machine in said libraries also had a copyright law notice posted rather prominently.
No need for the librarian to memorize that bit.
Dude, might want to stop sniffing the glue.
To be fair, he probably could have sold photocopies of the laserdiscs with out any problems.
Sadly, whats probably going to happen is someone in a country where copying is rampant and laws weak like China, is going to copy the OP’s disc and market it. They have all kinds of pirate stuff from china. Its why foreign movies make so little money there.
Imagine that someone is copying your work in the exact same manner you describe.
Imagine he or she says:
"due to the the progress of the Internet, I haven’t sold too many copies of** Kamakiri’s** work. In fact, I made it quite plain that I would “cease and desist” when **Kamakiri *either offered these products as DVDs or other means. I just wanted to fill a hole. I put a lot of time into my “illegal” activity, so, yeah, I was asking for some money. But these days, I’m lucky if I sell one DVD of Kamakiri’s work every three months."
You wouldn’t tolerate it, would you?
Yes, I agree, and you can’t simply create a notice as justification for your action and expect that to used in place of actual law. This would be like one of us taking money out of your retirement account and using it for some lofty purpose without asking your permission and when caught expecting you to be “cool” about it. Coming up with some lame excuse like others felt it would be better for the economy if your retirement money was in circulation than sitting there earning interest you won’t use for 40 years. Not going to work.
Also, if there is enough demand for something or you think they should be a demand for it then create a petition to contact the copyright holders to make it available. Or put up a web page that talks about it with contact information to the copyright holders how to write them a letter to say you want the copyrighted material made available for sale.
Furthermore, there is no excuse for not understanding and respecting copyright law, it’s 100% free and extremely easy to understand if you go to their website and read the booklet about it, starting with this 12 page PDF from the US Copyright Office:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf
They have a website too at:
http://www.copyright.gov
I don’t blame CBS or any copyright holder at all, and I don’t blame copyright laws. They are there to protect the creators and publishers of works.
It’s the copyright holder’s property, their IP, and they have control over it. Just because they currently have decided not to make it available, doesn’t mean you can simply take it and do what you wish. What people fail to understand is that if a company can’t protect it’s assets like this, then they won’t spend money to produce them. You don’t have any knowledge of the legal situations or what part of the catalog the works are in, and what the copyright holders intend to do with them. This is like taking land someone owns and decides to sell it in 40 years and you feel justify in living on that land because they aren’t making it available for sale and not using it. Real estate investing wouldn’t exist if the owner can’t control the property they own.
What you really mean is that you thought this place would be one where folks would say they agreed with you, that you had a right to do what you have been doing.
If I were you I’d go crawling on my hands and knees to CBS, in abject submission, promising never, ever, to break the law again as you have done. Cringe, be apologetic, and maybe they will believe you and let you alone.
What really gets under my skin is that the OP is a musician and he reached for the “I couldn’t get exactly what I wanted legally so I just went ahead and took it in violation of the clear rights of the copyright holder” excuse.
Actually, I have to disagree on this. Please note:
I’m willing to accept Kamakiri’s word on this. He was clearly breaking copyright law, but here’s the thing: Acsenray writes that the OP broke the law because that was the only way he could get what he wanted. But as I see it, the OP already had what he wanted: A good quality VHS copy of the movie. I presume that no laws got violated in that transaction. The problems started when the OP chose to altruistically share copies of the movie with other fans, and then he did that for what he calls merely “a little compensation”.
So now we have an interesting philosophical question, entirely appropriate for IMHO. Which of these two lawbreakers is the more contemptible, and which might we have more compassion for:[ol]
[li]The guy who wants something so much, but cannot get it in any legal manner, and so he violates the law to get it.[/li][li]The guy who got what he wants, legally but with difficulty, and so he flouts the law in sympathy for people who were not as successful as he was.[/li][/ol]
What gets me is that he’s willing to die on a hill made of William Shatner’s lesser works. Maybe he can plead insanity, because coming here, a site searchable by Google, and bragging about it is completely insane, like the gangstas who get arrested for bragging on Facebook about the murders they commit.
depending on who you ask, even digitizing it to DVD for himself would have been “Fine;” even though “format shifting” is a slightly gray area of copyright law, (which shouldn’t be) it’s unlikely anyone would see fault in it.
as you say, he went off the reservation once he started selling copies.
I feel the law has gone past the point of “protecting the creator”.
Look at “Steamboat Willie”. It was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Disney died in 1966 and Iwerks died in 1971. Did either one of them benefit from the extensions of the copyright in 1976 or 1998?
Copyright protection nowadays is predominantly about big corporations extending their ownership of decades old properties. The creators have long since left the picture and aren’t making anything from their creations. And corporations would rather continue to profit from old creations that they’ve already paid for rather than pay some current creator to make something new.
The fact is that the copyright term forms part of the value of a work. When a creator licenses or sells his or her rights, the price will take into account the length of the exclusive rights.
And licensing and selling rights to big bad corporations is the best way for the vast majority of creators to exploit their creations—assuming they can find a big bad corporation who wants it—because few creators have the ability or resources to, for example, make a $250 million feature film.
No, let’s not look at “Steamboat Willie,” because the current copyright term was NOT set for “Steamboat Willie” or other films made in the 1920s.
It was set to increase the value of rights for ALL copyright holders. And to harmonize the term of protection with other Berne convention countries.
Oh, that must why the majority of works being sold, marketed, promoted, and publicly performed in 2015 in movie theaters, on television, etc., are 80 years old. No, wait, they’re not.
Remember, a big bad corporation can sit back on its laurels and live off of royalties from 80-year-old short cartoons … Well, hardly ever.
If there had been an 80-year-old short cartoon that was still that popular and lucrative, hey, maybe it’s not such a crime to give it life-plus-70 or 90 years’ protection.
To be clear about my personal views, I would have no problem with returning to life-plus-50 as the basic term of copyright protection, provided that all Berne convention countries did the same
However, I see nothing intrinsically wrong with life-plus-70.
Kudos to Acsenray et al for turning this meh OP into an interesting, educational thread.
I think they’ll probably just let him alone anyway if he gives the whole thing up and never puts anything up again. I doubt anyone in the corporate office of CBS is going to take huge personal offense to his email, and it’s clear there’s not much money to get by going after him.
Agreed. Now if we were talking about The Andersonville Trial that would be different.