Re: OT: Movie editing... (Was RE: [dvd-discuss] Fair use in the wild ...)

[Wendy Seltzer <wendy(at)seltzer.com>]

At 08:32 AM 10/26/01 -0500, Kroll, Dave wrote:
>Perhaps it's not new, but it disturbs me that we're losing the
>integrity of a historical resource.  Not that I recalled or care much
>what the police are holding in E.T., but it bothers me that there
>may be no record of the movie _I_ saw.  It feels a bit 1984ish;
>"The cops don't have shotguns.  They never had shotguns."
>Whatever version you saw goes down the memory hole.

If it bothers you with E.T., just wait until libraries have only electronic 
subscriptions to newspapers and magazines...

>To try and bring this back towards topic:  Has the fact that they
>retouched a few scenes make this a new work for purposes
>of copyright?  Does reset the shot clock?  How much of a change
>to a work is required to make it new?

It's yet another problem exacerbated by anticircumvention.  The new 
derivative work copyright date applies only to the newly-added content, but 
you can bet that the TPM won't protect only the new scene.  So even when 
we've waited long enough for works to enter the public domain, the only 
versions publishers will be printing in the format-of-the-day will contain 
a revised intro or a new preface, tacked on as an excuse to put the whole 
thing under techno-legal protection.   Unless courts recognize the 
possibility of "significant non-circumvention use" of a circumvention 
device, we won't be able to reach the unprotectable part of the mix.

--Wendy


--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.com
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html