NitrateVille.com

Is this too bold?

Is that going to be in every frame?

Bob

A good legal term is "conspicuous". You may want to do two corners to be safe. I am sure after a few minutes the viewer will no longer take notice.

Matthew

mwalls wrote:A good legal term is "conspicuous". You may want to do two corners to be safe. I am sure after a few minutes the viewer will no longer take notice.

Matthew

Cures two evils: hides the logo and dissuades poachers.

Just a bit Rohauresque, no?

and speaking of Rohauer.... the Chen Group brought his collection which included those films stored at LOC. The original donor restrictions continue on whatever Talmadge sister films they have. Not sure how protective the Cohen Group is since I've had no dealings with them. But it's surprising that they haven't (so far as we know) stopped Staykov from selling Talmadge films (several of which are not even likely in the public domain).

The "Ed" logo is a joke. I'd never purposely mar a film.....

bigshot wrote:Public domain is public domain. If he isn't using the musical scores, which are newly created and performed and are protected by copyright, he is within his rights to release the film itself as long as it was produced before 1923.

As a wise man once said, "the law is a ass." Do ethics enter into your purview here?

There are always big corporations claiming trademark protection to extend the term of works that should fall under copyright, even though the law says trademark shouldn't be used to extend copyright protection. There are also always people who exploit the public domain and then want to claim copyright over what they got for free themselves. And there are those who probably do have a legitimate claim to fair use who don't exercise it because of the legal hassles it would require to prove fair use in court. But all of those things are more a matter of practical business issues than legal or ethical ones. I don't know of any court cases where a judge ruled that publishing someone else's restoration constituted copyright infringement. I'd be interested to hear about it if something like that exists. I do believe in supporting fair use and the public domain. That is what propagates culture.

The music analogy is a perfect one, because there are thousands of compilation CDs on the market made up from public domain material that are sourced from other people's CDs, including big label releases... especially in Europe where the copyright extension act isn't in force. This really is very common. It isn't particularly respectful of the people who go to the effort to do the restorations, but no one is attempting to sue to stop it that I am aware of.

wich2 wrote:As a wise man once said, "the law is a ass." Do ethics enter into your purview here?

Defining ethical is even more difficult than defining legal. We all have our own point of view about what matters and what doesn't when it comes to ethics.

bobfells wrote:

bigshot wrote:Public domain is public domain. If he isn't using the musical scores, which are newly created and performed and are protected by copyright, he is within his rights to release the film itself as long as it was produced before 1923.

Wrong. Best explained by a practical example right here on another N'ville thread. I have an original 78 rpm record from 1917. Obviously, that's in the public domain and I can post the track here or anywhere else in public without infringing on anybody's copyright. However, if RCA issues this 78 on a CD that is copyrighted 2017 (or any year after 1923) and I copy and post the same track but from the CD and not from the original 78, then I have infringed on RCA's copyright on the CD.

In this case Ed's video version is a new work that makes the underlying film copyrightable on Ed's video. Not just the newly added music but the video itself. So if I use the film off of Ed's video then I have infringed on his copyright. But if I order my own video from the LOC (as Ed did) and I sell copies of that then I have avoided Ed's version and there is no infringement on my part. I have been over this a number of times through the years and I find it tiresome. Ed is correct - he has been ripped off. He has legal standing to take action starting with a "cease and desist" letter if he wants to.

Lot's of labels are remastering their back catalogs just to extend the copyrights.
In film, can't a restoration be copyrighted?

bigshot wrote:

wich2 wrote:As a wise man once said, "the law is a ass." Do ethics enter into your purview here?

Defining ethical is even more difficult than defining legal. We all have our own point of view about what matters and what doesn't when it comes to ethics.

To some degree. But there's often widespread agreement in cases like this, under the "Everything I Need To Know, I Learned In Kindergarten" rubric:

"Don't steal another living person's work w/o acknowledgement."

Or, "Don't rub another man's rhubarb."

Or to be archaic, "Thou shalt not steal."

-Craig

Michael Arlt wrote:Lot's of labels are remastering their back catalogs just to extend the copyrights.
In film, can't a restoration be copyrighted?

There's never been precedent for that in any court case, and the copyright law is pretty clear that copyright only applies to "creative works". They have to do "creative changes" to the films, like the Disney animated features with repainted colors and newly added sound effects to be able to claim copyright.

Ebay has removed the listing.

I filed a NOCI copyright infringement report, gave a detailed explanation (along with his response from Facebook) and provided extra info as asked. Frankly, I'm surprised it worked.

They removed the listing within 2 hours of their decision.

Mike Gebert wrote:It's galling. The best we can do is support the good guys. Next time Ed or anyone else puts out a movie... buy it from him. That includes the good companies-- Kino, Flicker Alley, Milestone, Cohen Film Collection, Criterion, Grapevine, Twilight Time, Olive, and the big name studios when they dabble in our field.

It's really pretty simple. Support the ones who do the work. Ignore the ones who don't. Invest in the next thing they're going to put out by supporting the current one.

This, this a thousand times this!!! People are amazed when I tell them I will pay the equivalent of three months of Netflix for a Flicker Alley DVD but it's my hobby and it's something niche that wouldn't exist if it had to be sold in the $5 bin at Wally World. I could spend that money on a round of golf or a nice dinner at a restaurant or ticket to a ball game or whatever other people do with $30.

It does seem rather ironic, or perhaps tragic, that the closer you get to restoring a public domain film to its original theatrical presentation, the greater the risk you run that the results of your hard-earned labor is unprotected by copyright.

So you go to all the work of restoring a rare silent film, you rescan the frames in high definition without interlacing, put the original intertitles and tints back in, remove hairs and dirt, reduce scratches, stabilize the image and repair damaged frames where possible and all a bootlegger feels he needs to do is to cut out the soundtrack and profit off your hard work.

Meanwhile, some butcher with no sense of propriety decides to make his own version of the film starting with a transfer on Beta tape by inserting new titles in an inappropriate modern typeface, rearranging scenes, using bizarre tints, adding stock footage and a soundtrack from a garage metal junk band and releasing it as a "Collector's Edition", but he has the whole term of copyright to enjoy while you have to persuade a judge and jury that your efforts are worthy of protection under the law.

I touched upon some of these issues here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/201 ... omain.html" target="_blank

"Life is unfair." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

very happy that E-Bay responded......thieves, and that is exactly what they are, should not be allowed to get away without consequences....only hope they removed his whole catalog......I will buy the DVD when it is available and only hope others will do the same.......it is the only way we will continue to have new releases......

The fact that none of the commercial outfits seem to want these films to offer for streaming or DVD/BLU releases leaves them in limbo. If people contact me, I can get copies to them, but that's about the best I can do.

drednm wrote:Is this too bold?

That's downright Detlaffian!

bobfells wrote:I can't believe he sells much at those prices. Most folks aren't that dumb!

You'd think. But according to his ebay listings, he's got feedback for 105 sales over the last 12 months.

silentmovies742 wrote:

bobfells wrote:I can't believe he sells much at those prices. Most folks aren't that dumb!

You'd think. But according to his ebay listings, he's got feedback for 105 sales over the last 12 months.

When you look at his sales feedback they are chunks bought by one buyer and every comment the same and glowing. I think he buys them himself under a fake account. It fits the pattern since he's obsessed with getting perfect feedback. I can't believe anyone's buying five of his $30 at a time.....

drednm wrote:

silentmovies742 wrote:

bobfells wrote:I can't believe he sells much at those prices. Most folks aren't that dumb!

You'd think. But according to his ebay listings, he's got feedback for 105 sales over the last 12 months.

When you look at his sales feedback they are chunks bought by one buyer and every comment the same and glowing. I think he buys them himself under a fake account. It fits the pattern since he's obsessed with getting perfect feedback. I can't believe anyone's buying five of his $30 at a time.....

Yes, but some of those buyers have feed back in the hundreds or the thousands. And where is he getting some of these films from anyway? They're not commonly out there in the collector's circuit?

I think a lot of his titles came from a British Outfit...Classic Cinema Originals....they had a huge catalog but shut down about six months ago. the big difference was pricing...they charging ten dollars of less a film and the prints were for the most part pretty good.

So is there a way to legitimately access titles such as this one once they have passed through Kickstarters?

They rarely/never get listed on commercial sites which seems to leave the market wide open to bootleggers like this one to claim 'PD' when they dupe titles for mass sales.

I'm sure lots of us would completely support the restorers and those who have put the time in if the films were easy to buy once the work had been done.

didi-5 wrote:So is there a way to legitimately access titles such as this one once they have passed through Kickstarters?

They rarely/never get listed on commercial sites which seems to leave the market wide open to bootleggers like this one to claim 'PD' when they dupe titles for mass sales.

I'm sure lots of us would completely support the restorers and those who have put the time in if the films were easy to buy once the work had been done.

No easy answer. You can always contact any of us who do projects thru Kickstarter or Nitrateville. Any of my projects are available thru me. I know Ben Model has created his own DVD label to market his projects. Some eventually get picked up by major labels.

The bootleg copies, however, are out there. I had just written to David Shepard to tell him that while I had stopped this guy from selling The Bride's Play, he was still selling David's That Model from Paris. I see so many films on YT and offered now on Ebay and Amazon. But if you're not the owner, the complaints go unheeded. I think I even saw La Roue on YT but it might have been some other edition and not David's. I didn't look at it.