[Upd-discuss] Public Domain is a Crime

[Elizabeth Stark]

Quoting Yannick Delbecque <yannick.delbecque@mail.mcgill.ca>:

> [2005-12-16 12:48, P.L.Hayes]
> > "a film will still be copyrighted even if it is in the public domain"
> >
> > "Please let me know what you think about this."
>
> Apart from making me speculate about the incompetence of this person,
> this make me think about ways to promote explicitely the protection and
> widest possible usage of public domain material.
>
> One possible way to achive this could be to legally force anyone using
> public domain material in a new work or product to identify it
> explicitely as such. If DVDs were distributed beginning with a video
> notice like "This work is in the public domain" instead of the overly
> repeted message that it is criminal to share the movie, many people
> might start to think about using these work themselves.

This reminds me of a (US) case I recently read that ruled that a video of a film
that had fallen into the public domain due to lack of renewal was still a valid
derivative work and was thus protectable under copyright law. (Maljack Prods.
v. UAV Corp.) The creators of the video had merely digitized the soundtrack
("sweetened, equalized, balanced, made into stereo" as they claimed) and
changed the aspect ratio of the film, but the court ruled that this was
sufficient to constitute a derivative work. Thus by extension, even DVD
versions of PD films may still be under copyright. I'm not sure if there's been
a case on the DVD issue in particular, but it would be interesting to see.

I find this particularly troubling because many PD films are not available in
digital format (of course we should encourage digitization efforts such as by
the internet archive), and thus since putting a PD film on DVD requires
audio/video digitization and changing of aspect ratio, PD films released on DVD
can regain copyright protection. Even if a court were to rule that mere
digitization alone was not sufficient, those creating such DVDs could easily
"sweeten" the soundtrack to make it protectable...
>
>
>
> --
> Yannick Delbecque - http://yannick.delbecque.org
> Cogitateurs-Agitateurs - http://cogitateurs-agitateurs.org
> FACIL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre -
> http://facil.qc.ca
>
>
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