19 Jan
2003
19 Jan
'03
12:22 p.m.
Wayne M. Smith wrote:
No. The original premise of my post was that in some circumstances if
works are kept out of the public domain they are taken better care of.
I wasn't arguing anything.
It seems to me that you were disputing the idea that works
entering the public domain would be a good thing. Maybe I
misremember what you wrote earlier. If so, I apologize.
UCLA is not
going to "restore" a public domain picture like Royal
Wedding, because it doesn't need restoring. The original
interpositives reside in a temperature controlled vault in Colorado
and are in relatively good shape. Nor, however, is anyone going to
spend the money (usually around $200,000) it would require
to prepare
a new master from the original source materials
and do the
necessary
clean up on the audio and video. Sure, there are
some
people who will
spend the extra dollars for restored print, but
not nearly
enough to
justify the cost.
So it seems like your position is:
1) With the current perptual copyright system, there will never be a
good "restored" version of Royal Wedding, because the
studio doesn't
believe it would make (sufficient) money from it.
2) If worked entered the public domain, there would
never be a good
"restored" version of them, because no one would have the original
interpositives to work from, and no one would be willing to spend
the money.
It's not because no one has the interpositives to work from, it's
because the party that has the interpositives won't make the investment
because the existence of cheap, low-quality, public domain versions
dooms any ability to recoup the cost.
Since the end result of both options is the same, this
hardly
seems to be a compelling argument for NOT allowing copyrights
to expire.
There is no contradiction. Royal Wedding is an example of what happens
when the copyright does expire. For better or worse, the property is
neglected. If it was owned, it would be taken care of and you could
purchase a beautiful remastered print -- assuming you're a fan of the
MGM musical genre.
For software, where the cost of
"remastering" an old release
would be negligible, there's even less rationale for a
copyright system that allows a copyright owner to suppress
copying and distribution of old works.
There, I agree with you. Film is a special case because the expression
of the work is tied to physical "analog" materials that tend to
deterioriate. Software, has been digital since its creation and
therefore susceptible to cheap, perfect copies.
-W