Folks, My apologies Jessica and Matthew... BUT! As much as I agree that I'd love to hear UCLA's side and castigate them for their unholy views (my mind wanders to the interview of Lars von Trier on the subject of Adolph Hitler and Albert Speers) of fair use of entire feature films, I caution anyone who suggests someone else should talk about an on-going lawsuit that their institution is facing. Getting a person fired should not be our goal.
And Roger, I'm joking in my sentence above, but any distributor is very touchy about the legality of migrating materials (especially with CSS and/or copyright protection) across different platforms without proper authorization from the copyright holder. And until the courts or the copyright office specifically allows this migration of entire films beyond the boundaries of fair use established by prior court cases, "theft" is actually the legal term the US Copyright law uses in terms of improper digital duplication of an artists' material. It's totally and ugly term and I would never call anyone a thief unless they broke into my house (good luck getting by the hounds of hell) or stole my car, but the internet age has redefined intellectual theft to a level never seen before in history. (Though Mark Twain and Charles Dickens lost a ton of money from unauthorized editions.) It's not for nothing the most "popular" illegal download site was called Pirate's Bay. And it's not just Warner Brothers or Sony losing huge amounts of money by IP theft. It's a lot of people on this listserv. As a Board of Director of AMIA who represents the studios, archives, libraries and academics, the organization has specifically avoided copyright issues such as these. But it does allow me to hear from all sides of the argument. What the US really needs is a clearing house for use of all materials from copyright holders, royalty fees for this usage (whether its a dollar for students or a million dollars from Microsoft) and government support of distribution (which many countries have extensive support such as France). But until then, I don't think it's personal but the feelings are pretty heated. -- Best regards, Dennis Doros Milestone Film & Video/Milliarium Zero PO Box 128 Harrington Park, NJ 07640 Phone: 201-767-3117 Fax: 201-767-3035 email: [email protected] www.milestonefilms.com www.ontheboweryfilm.com www.arayafilm.com www.exilesfilm.com www.wordisoutmovie.com www.killerofsheep.com <http://www.killerofsheep.com> AMIA Austin 2011: www.amianet.org Join "Milestone Film" on Facebook! Follow Milestone on Twitter! <http://twitter.com/#!/MilestoneFilms>
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
