Re: [dvd-discuss] Slightly OT - Japanese copyrights

["Ernest Miller" <ernest.miller(at)aya.yale.edu>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Noah silva" <nsilva@atari-source.com>
To: <dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Slightly OT - Japanese copyrights
> > >
> > > If you have license to a copy, and the right to do what
> > > you wish with your own copy, then that plan should work.
> >
> > The subtitles would be a derivative work and illegal.  Copyright law
> > prohibits copying.  If you make a copy and destroy the original, you
still
> > have violated copyright law.
>
> I don't think so, not if you have a right to space shifting (transferring
> to a different media).  It is supposed to prohibit _illegal_ copying only.

Spaceshifting is for personal use only.  If you spaceshift a CD to an MP3 on
a CD-R for personal use, you are probably protected.  If you then sell or
distribute that CD-R with MP3s on it, you will find yourself in violation of
the exclusive rights of both copying and distribution.

> >  I agree that this makes no sense, which is why
> > I advocate eliminating the "right to copy" as part of copyright law.
> >
> > > It is similar to a plan executed by someone who was fed
> > > up w/ all the (unnecessary) sex in movies.  He offered
> > > a service whereby he edited a movie to make a clean version.
> > > IIRC either the customer had to send in their copy of
> > > the tape to be edited, or they bought a copy from him
> > > (as they would from any other reseller) that he had already
> > > edited.  He did not _make_ copies, he edited existing
> > > ones.
>
> Yes, but editing is still copying, if you skip a scene, you are copying
> from later in the tape to earlier in the tape, etc.  For legal purposes
> this shouldn't be copying because you have one lisence and you end up with
> one copy.
>
It is not actually clear how they are doing the editing on videotape.  If as
you suggest and is likely, they are copying on the same tape, they may be
liable or they may not.