Hi, Folks -

Probably sometime in the 1980s, I paid probably $80 for a legal VHS tape of the 1972 film of the musical "1776".

In 2012, I made YouTube videos of two 10-min segments derived from that 141-minute tape. I posted those here, as "The Vote" and "The Signing", on July 4, 2012.

Within the next few years, "The Signing" video was removed from YouTube, due to a copyright claim by Sony. I sort of understood that. That video included the closing credits, over a bit of fife-and-drum music, and of course the music might have been under separate copyright also.

Now, a day or so ago, as we approach July 4, "The Vote" has also been removed, due to Sony's claim of copyright. Again, I understand it.

But it's got me puzzling over the whole darned matter of copyrights and whether copyright law is really serving the creators and the public good as I think was intended.

Consider: A Japanese company is saying the RMN "audience" is not allowed to view 10 or 20 minutes of a 2-hour 21-minute essentially patriotic film, on the Fourth of July, 46-years after the film was produced, because - or at least this is the theory - to do so might deprive the Japanese company of sales of the total "product" that they now own, having bought the American company with the American name "Columbia" that made the film in the first place - when of course it's at least equally possible that allowing those relatively few minutes of the film to be viewed, _on_ the Fourth of July, might lead to additional sales of the whole film, now on DVD and at Amazon for less than an eighth what I paid for my VHS tape.

Conceptually, I get it. But as things work out, it's as though I don't "own" the thing I paid $80 for, or, perhaps, it's as though I own the tape but not what's on it, pretty much identical to Microsoft's business model in which you don't own the software you paid for because what they sold you is a "license to use" their software under certain conditions.

I don't have a good solution for this, but my sense of it is, "Something's wrong here and we need to rethink it." What's not being well served is the almost universal impulse to _share_ with one another things that are praiseworthy.

Meanwhile, Facebook, Google, and others are free to use information they've quietly gathered about us. I'm sure they could argue that they paid us for it by providing free access to their platforms, but, something's just not right there.

Related:

In case you missed it: A federal court has ruled that Warner/Chappell does NOT have a copyright on the lyrics to "Happy Birthday to You"
hobie -- Thursday, 1-Oct-2015 03:40:00

(insane) link: "Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement"
hobie -- Friday, 16-Feb-2018 15:47:18

--hobie

***************************************************************