Comments on: Restored copyright? Querulous comments on early Hitchcock

By: Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:01:01 +0000

George: While I think “zombie copyright” is fine name for restored copyrights, it’s not a novel usage–it apparently goes back as far as 1996, when the restoration took place.
HP: A fine comment, but I’d take issue with a couple of things. For many films made in the U.S. prior to 1976 where copyright was not renewed or was never registered, they’re not “greymarket”–they’re public domain. You haven’t violated any moral or legal principle. (I believe almost all Mill Creek Entertainment DVDs fall into either this area or are TV movies/episodes where the rightsholders don’t see any probable value. And yes, most all are apparently transfers from whatever VHS-level copies they could find.)
As for those that *are* legitimately under copyright but orphaned or simply off the market, it’s fuzzier.
Actually, some of Hitchcock’s silents and early soundies apparently were worth restoring–thus the availability of 10 of the 18 films in, presumably, restored form. The Ring and Rich and Strange are both on the $22.50 Lions Gate box set. (My opinions of both, in the Mill Creek versions–which apparently are missing footage–are, shall we say, less enthusiastic than yours, but opinions are like that.)

By: HP

HP — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:18:14 +0000

I own a fair number of what I call “greymarket” DVDs. These are DVDs of movies where the intellectual content of the film has clearly fallen into public domain, the original creators of said content are all dead, and the DVDs are made from orphaned transfers from the VHS/videodisc era.
By doing so, I suppose I open myself up to some sort of legal action, if there were a legal actor who felt it worth their time and money. When such films later get a new transfer, and sufficient effort has been put into making the new transfer from archival quality materials and restored using the best technology, I have gladly paid to own the better transfer (e.g., the greymarket DVD of “Blood Red: The Hatchet Murders” from a multi-disc budget set, versus my archival special edition of Dario Argento’s “Profundo Rosso”).
I recognize that in some squinty sense I may have violated some ill-defined legal principle. But I have done nothing morally wrong, and many things that are morally right.
Law is not morality; morality is not law. And tort law does not rise nearly to the level of civil law in the moral calculus. Even if, in some abstract sense, you have broken the law, you have done nothing wrong. If some nominal rights owner to an orphaned property wants you to pay, said orphaned rights owner is morally obliged to provide value for money. Given the economics of tort law, I think any such rights owner would be suicidal to take you to court over Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” or “Jamaica Inn.”
And frankly, too many films and recordings languish, unavailable in any legitimate digital format, because the rights-holder has determined that the audience is not large enough. There’s no way that Hitchcock’s silent films and early soundies could ever cost-justify restoration and sale through legitimate means. They’d never make the investment back. So, despite your lukewarm reviews, you’re actually doing the rights holders a service by keeping these works alive in human memory. If it were up to the rights-holders, these films would be forgotten just on general principle, rather than let slide on a strict interpretation of rights.
(That said, Hitchcock’s 1927 silent film “The Ring” is completely awesome, and anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong. Also, the early soundie “Rich and Strange” is pretty cool, and well worth watching.)

By: george.w

george.w — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:13:01 +0000

It’s high time we started calling restored copyright by its right name: “ZOMBIE COPYRIGHTS!!1!”
As far as I know, I just now invented that term, and hereby declare it totally copyfree so anyone can use it without attribution.