Actually, although Ladies and Gentlemen… The Fabulous Stains has never been “officially” released on VHS or DVD, you can legally purchase unofficial DVD copies of the film on Ebay… I know I did.
In the same vein, you should keep an eye out another good film from that era Breaking Glass.
Hey, now. It’s an interesting document of its era, with cameos or even larger roles by several musicians who were in bands in England in the late 70s and early 80s but are now forgotten, but it wasn’t all that good. A quarter-century on, only the general outline of the story and an feeling of “well, I’m glad I watched it, but I won’t need to ever repeat the experience” remain for me.
If it’s not an official release, then it’s not legal. “Got away with it” doesn’t equal “legal.”
Actually ebay polices itself pretty strictly. As a person who often sells vinyl on ebay, I have been sharply warned when I listed something that ebay considered to be a bootleg.
As for movies (and I may well be totally or partially incorrect here) but I have been told that if no one acutally owns a film’s distribution rights, then anyone can copy and sell versions without fear of legal reprisal. I believe that is the case with LaGTFS.
How does no one own the distribution rights to a work that’s not in the public domain? That doesn’t make any sense. I would think that the copyright holder would automatically own all rights that haven’t been specifically assigned elsewhere.
I think the key is that they haven’t specifically assigned anywhere. No one in, say, the North American market owns the rights to distribute the film, therefore anyone can. I am not an expert, but I give you this current ebay listing (one of several) for the same copy of the film that I bought…
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=617&item=6402562616&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
Make of it what you will.
It appears to say that it was distributed outside of the US. I dunno. It may be an illegal international copy, maybe there was some other agreement.
Single sales on ebay are not distribution, but I’m pretty sure ebay would not like even single sales of illegal copies, if that’s what it is.
Distribution rights question asked here so as not to continue the hijack of this thread.
Untrue. The copyright holder has to agree to allow the distributor to make the copies. You cannot make a copy of any work not in the public domain (and a recording made in the 1980s would not be in the public domain) without the copyright holder’s permission. If you made copies to distribute, you’d be in deep shit.
Distribution, BTW, is a contractual issue, not a copyright issue. It’s only a copyright issue if you make a copy.
The DVD copies on eBay was a copy “never released in the US.” However, it easily could have been legally released somewhere else and thus be legal to sell on eBay. Selling a work that you’ve bought is not a copyright violation unless you have made a copy of that work. The film was shown in Canada, so it’s possible that is the origin.
It’s also possible that the guy selling the DVD is hyping a legal copy of the film.
So, it was released in 2008:
Added L>FS and Times Square to my Amazon cart.
I remember them when they were new, but completely forgot about them.
Now if only Light of Day would come out on DVD.
I had never seen L>FS until it came out on DVD. From What I understand, it was a staple on USA’s Up All Night but I didn’t watch that too often because we didn’t have cable growing up. That being said, the song “The Professionals” is a great piece of 80s punk rock.
