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

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

The issues are very different. The others edit, they down add.  For
Moviemask, they have to fear the DMCA.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kroll, Dave" <Dave_Kroll@cargilldow.com>
To: <dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 11:59 AM
Subject: RE: [dvd-discuss] Slightly OT - Japanese copyrights


> "What about something that offers the subtitling as a service?"
>
> TechTV did a story about similar services.  (I think it's been mentioned
> here, too.)
> http://www.techtv.com/freshgear/reviews/story/0,23008,3372874,00.html
>
> It appears to be acceptable.  (Although I it appears that means
>  "not-yet-sued", rather than endorsed or licensed.)
>
> According to www.moviemask.com:
> Are there copyright issues involved with MovieMask?
> No, there are no copyright issues involved. Bruce Ewing, Copyright
> Attorney, spoke on Fox News saying, "what the software manufacturer
> is doing is simply giving viewers another way to view a copyrighted work,
> and absent any copying, it's not going to be copyright infringement."
>
> http://www.clearplay.com doesn't appear to have any pages
> on "legal" or "copyright", so I can't tell their position.
>
> Surely the issues must be similar between subtitling and
> "masking".  (Maybe not.  Change the facts, change the verdict.)
>
> David Kroll
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Ballowe [mailto:hangman@steelballs.org]
> Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 11:33 AM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Slightly  OT - Japanese copyrights
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 11:53:38AM -0500, Ernest Miller wrote:
> > Space shifting is generally legal and if you subtitled a movie that you
> used
> > yourself you probably would be fine.  However, distribute that movie and
> you
> > will get in trouble (having violated both copying and distribution
> rights).
> >
> What about something that offers the subtitling as a service? If I was a
> retailer who sold copies of a movie, which would be legal by contracts
> with the copyright holder etc -- even then they make the copies, not me,
> and also run a service that allows people to send me copies of movies they
> own and I send them back subtitled (or they buy it from me and I sub-title
> it before sending - saves 2 stages of shipping, they don't need to have
> held it before it becomes their copy). Especially if I have a way of
> overlaying
> the subtitles without making a copy of the work, I don't see a problem -
> unless
> I'm missing something in the law. It may be creating a derivative work,
but
> the derivative work isn't being sold, the service to create it is.
>
> > This, of course, is what does not make sense to me.  Copying is legal
for
> > personal use (mostly) but not if you distribute it.  Why not get rid of
> > copying as a violation at all?  Why not just have public distribution be
> the
> > crime?
> >
>
> This gets into the question of what to do about private distribution. I
> would
> argue that Napster, for example, wasn't public distribution. It's easy to
> say that the Internet allows communities to form that are world wide. If
you
> restrict sharing to only one such group (while membership may be open to
> anybody) it's no longer really public. It's a long shot arguement, but it
> is based on parallels between social networks and computer networks.
>
>