DVD Legitimacy

[seekermeister]

I have been considering buying a complete set of all 558 episodes of "Death Valley Days", but when I asked the vendor about their legitimacy, I never received a response.

Going through their FAQ, I found the following:

Some of these DVD's haven't even been released yet. How is it possible that you sell them?

There is a section of the American copyright law known as "The Berne Act" that Clearly states: films unreleased in the United States, including original versions of films altered and/or edited for release in the United States, are NOT protected by American copyright; thus, they are considered public domain. The entire purpose of our website is to provide otherwise unavailable films or television shows to the serious collector.

I did Google on this a bit, but what I found was unclear. So far as I have found, DVDs of this series are somewhat rare, and very limited in episodes. This leaves me wondering if the Berne Act was referring to films unreleased in the US in general, or just those unreleased in DVDs?

I was under the impression that the copyright to all of the episodes of the series were still currently owned by US Borax, or whatever they are called now.

 

[smsff7]

Death Valley Days WAS released in the US.

Copyright applies to the content, not the medium.

I was wondering about this myself. What about say a TV series that never was released to video, but was once aired on TV? Would that fall under this law?

 

[Kari]

Seekermeister, following the logics of that quote in your post, when Windows 7 was officially released 22nd of October 2009 in major markets and languages, it had not been copyright protected in the regions where the launch date was a few days later during the period these regions had to wait.

I believe that source of your quote intentionally misinterprets The Bern Act and international copyright laws.

Kari

 

[seekermeister]

Manay Pepin,

Obviously, it was released to TV broadcasters, but I'm not sure that it has ever been released in DVD form. What few DVDs that I have found contained exactly the same episodes that are available on the Internet Archive, which only has films in the public domain. Since copy protection applies only to the media and not the film itself, I really don't understand where the original copyright applies? I would only understand how the original copyright would apply to someone who is using the film to make money, not the consumer themselves, since it is very legal to record any film or broadcast of any kind on TV.

 

[seekermeister]

Seekermeister, following the logics of that quote in your post, when Windows 7 was officially released 22nd of October 2009 in major markets and languages, it had not been copyright protected in the regions where the launch date was a few days later during the period these regions had to wait.

I believe that source of your quote intentionally misinterprets The Bern Act and international copyright laws.

Kari

Correct me if I'm wrong, but copyright law for software is not the same thing as copyright for films...is it? Whether the quote is accurate or not, it only speaks of films, not software.

EDIT: Also, I believe the subject is only about US copyright law, not international...at least in this particular instance.

 

[Kari]

A film is intellectual property, too. Like music or software, text of a book, a photo or a painting.

 

[seekermeister]

A film is intellectual property, too. Like music or software, text of a book or a painting.

That is using too broad of a stroke to define the answer to my question. Copyright, just like patents have limitations. What ownership rights that they start out with are not infinite.

 

[Kari]

The copyright of a DVD is not for a media itself, the physical DVD disk. It's to protect the rights of the creators of the contents of that disk, the film. Exactly as the copyright of a book does not protect paper, the material of from which the book is made and printed to, but the text it contains.

 

[seekermeister]

The copyright of a DVD is not for a media itself, the physical DVD disk. It's to protect the contents of that disk, the film.

Perhaps, but I have a lot of DVDs of old movies that are definitely public domain, yet they still carry all of the copy warnings of newer DVDs. If the DVD is not protected, and the film is public domain, what is protected?

At the same time, since it is legal to record (copy) any film broadcast on TV in the US, it would seem that the copy protection actually does apply to the media, since it would not necessarily be known what the source of the copy was, once recorded.

EDIT: This also brings to question what right that a DVD manufacturer has when using film content that is already public domain? The mere fact that they have made a copy does not give them ownership of the content, because the content is already public.

 

[Kari]

The copyright agreements allow a consumer to record any show on TV or song on radio to his / her own use, it's the same all over the world when the show you recorded is shown on a public access network or on a subscription based network. This is because the network has already paid a certain amount of that based on the availability, how many customers can receive the signal. You are allowed to record for your own purpose but not distribute.

However, if you want to record for instance a pay per view movie, it's normally restricted. At least here various DRM systems makes it if not impossible but at least difficult to use your video equipment to record a pay per view movie or show because the price you pay includes right to watch it during a certain time frame but no more. You just get a warning telling you have no right to do record, if you try. The system is made difficult enough that authorities have no problems to show, if needed, that steps you had to take to record it certainly should have told you it's not allowed.

I am no authority in this area, this is more my opinion than facts, but I am quite interested in intellectual property rights. In my opinion, the copyright of a DVD and a hard copy of a photo for instance do not differ; the paper used to print the photo is not copyright protected, but the photo itself, protecting the rights of the photographer. Same with DVD, it's the contents and not the media that is protected.

Kari

 

[seekermeister]

I found an article that pertains to this, which says:

For cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it hasn't been shown within 50 years after the creation. Countries under the older revisions of the treaty may choose to provide their own protection terms, and certain types of works (such as phonorecords and motion pictures) may be provided shorter terms.

Although the Berne Convention states that the copyright law of the country where copyright is claimed shall be applied, article 7.8 states that "unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work", i.e. an author is normally not entitled a longer copyright abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give a longer term. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule.

The Berne Convention authorizes countries to allow "fair" uses of copyrighted works in other publications or broadcasts.[1] The Agreed Statement of the parties to the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996 states that: “It is understood that the mere provision of physical facilities for enabling or making a communication does not in itself amount to communication within the meaning of this Treaty or the Berne Convention.”[2] This language may mean that Internet service providers are not liable for the infringing communications of their users.[2]

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If I'm reading that correctly, it would mean that anything released in the US in 1960 or before, if not aired after that date, is no longer protected under US copyright law.

 

[seekermeister]

Anyone can claim a set of legal rights and threaten enforcement of those rights. That alone does not make infringement of those rights actionable.

The content of this posting and the opinion expressed herein is the sole property of Pepin. No other use is allowed and under no circumstances shall this opinion be viewed on any monitor smaller than 24 inches or at a resolution higher than 800*600.

I found it interesting that in the article I linked in my last post, that it said that while registration of a copyright is not mandatory in the US, that statutory damages and attorney fees were not recoverable unless it was. This seemed to apply to both material created in the US or outside of it.

 

[seekermeister]

All of the original episodes of Death Valley Days were created between 1952-1970 (they showed reruns until 1975). If my 1960 cutoff date is valid, that would mean that the first 9 years is public domain, while the last 10 years is not. Obviously, the people creating this set didn't pay too much attention to the Berne Act, in deciding whether they could do so or not. But, if the copyright owners don't stop them, or release their own DVDs, I guess that they don't care.