Re: OT: Wartime Warner Bros. Was (RE: [dvd-discuss] Hang theRIAA in their own noose.)

["John Zulauf" <johnzu(at)ia.nsc.com>]

That's good to hear, but the availability of these works could just as
well have been restricted.  I wonder what the response would be if one
requested to license the cartoons quilty racism for "a study of 1940's
racist imagery"  on DVD.

With these long terms and restrictive technologies, corporations and
authors have too great an ability to cover their tracks and bury the
truth.

Best Regards,

.002

"Kroll, Dave" wrote:
> 
> FWIW, there are some legal copies, too.  Check out the DVD "Cartoon Crazy's
> Go to War".
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1572523824/qid=1003774185/sr=1-13/ref
> =sr_1_11_13/103-6945811-9325426
> 
> And given the forum, I'll point out that it either isn't CSSed or is set for
> 
> region zero, since it plays when my Apex is set to region 1 or 2.
> 
> David Kroll
> 
>  -----Original Message-----
> From:   John Zulauf [mailto:johnzu@ia.nsc.com]
> Sent:   Thursday, October 18, 2001 5:13 PM
> To:     dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject:        Re: [dvd-discuss] Hang the RIAA in their own noose.
> 
> I'm very concerned that the records of this part of our history will be
> held only by (and then lost by) large conglomerates, allowing them to
> effectively rewrite any history they want**.  It is already happening.
> A few early Warner Bros cartoons (and wartime cartoons) have clear race
> and ethnic stereotyping.  These reflect their time -- however as WB
> still holds the copyright (and will long after the last reel has turned
> to dust) the true history of race and entertainment is already being
> lost.  Sometimes I think that the embarrasment over such egregious and
> flagrant racism is a driver in the term extension craze.  Corporations
> with large investments in character portfolios don't want to face the
> earlier writings for these characters (and diminish their present and
> future value).  They've got it all wrong though.  The shame these works
> bear is a national shame, hiding them won't heal the wound.  Illegal
> copies of some subset of these films (and writings about them) probably
> exist.  It is the pirates that are preserving history.  This shows so
> clearly that the laws are broken.
> 
> .002
> 
> **I have in my desk drawer a downloaded copy of a CNN DeCSS story which
> includes a pointer to the DeCSS software. The fact that CNN is a
> division of TimeWarner meant that the judgement of the premier news
> network of its time was sacrificed to defending the overweaning,
> litigious nature of it's parent company.  That CNN wasn't publically
> shamed as "60 Minutes" was over the "tortious interferance crap" shows
> that in the ephemeral world of digital media, rewriting history to fit
> the needs of the powerful is easier than ever, and documentation is
> fleeting (and were I to publish it) illegal.