--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Quirk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This is why I laugh at copyrights and Creative Commons. Once it's made, > it's not yours anymore.
As a writer, I have no beef with the concept of copyright law. However, I do wish we had healthier public domain laws. We certainly shouldn't have to wait until a century after an author's death to make full use of his or her contributions to the collective myth pool. Nor should trademark ownership be allowed to squelch the free use of public domain materials, as has often been the case with the Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff and various PD properties Disney has sunk its claws into. My big beef is with the treatment of orphaned movies... if the owner of a movie property hasn't released the movie on some kind of consumer media within the last umpteen years, or refuses to release the theatrical version audiences may have originally experienced and enjoyed, then that person or corporation does a disservice to that film's place in our collective history. After a certain point, it ought to be legal for somebody else with a print of the movie to restore and release it. Even if they have to pay some kind of mandatory fee to the copyright holder, which is fair. The same with TV shows released to home media... it bugs me that so often the soundtrack has to be redone for the DVD release because the license to the original music has run out, or, in the case of MST3K, entire episodes can't be released because the owners of the movies they featured refuses to relicense them. There needs to be some kind of "Fair Paid Use" where the integrity of a work featuring other licensed works can be maintained, with or without the cooperation of the original license holder, through the payment of a non-exorbitant fee (which could be determined case by case, and would depend on how much of the original work was used and how integral it was to the final product). But until they let me make the rules, it ain't likely to happen. :) Chris
