On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Nina Paley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Of course I'd rather distribute them in synch. But currently there's > no regulation of synch licenses, placing my film - many films - at the > mercy of corporations like Warner-Chappell and Sony. They are under no > obligation to license anything, they can charge whatever they want, > set whatever terms they want. They can block the release of content. > They can and do kill films. > > But they can't stop the consumer from synching at home. Yes, it's a > pain - but a player could make it much less of a pain. And it has huge > potential for independent filmmakers. That is a very big deal.
Now that I think about it a bit more, I'm not sure that this player would solve your issue. You would still need to distribute the metadata that tells the player where to play audio over the video. >From my limited understanding of synchronization rights, distributing that metadata would be illegal because the metadata constitutes the synchronization. I'd be interested to hear what a lawyer would say about this. Putting this detail aside, I'm sure the recording companies would find some way to put a stop to the legal distribution of your film if you used the insyncherator method. Perhaps they wouldn't do it for your particular film, but if it became popular enough with filmmakers and the recording companies were not earning as much as they would from selling synch rights, they would probably try something. While courts often make good decisions, they can also be blind-sided by big companies that twist the law to their advantage (MDY v Blizzard is a good example [4]). > Try to see this from a filmmaker's perspective. Filmmakers are told, > "don't touch that music." Documentarians are just barely finding their > way around synch rights hell thanks to Fair Use, but there are many > ways to use music in film that haven't been defended as Fair Use yet. > Most filmmakers have already "internalized the permission culture," > and kill their ideas before they're born. But not all of us. A multi- > source media player - let's call it an insyncherator - would give > artists one more reason to think outside the permission culture. The real solution here is to tell the unreasonable recording companies to get lost and go to Jamendo or other sources of libre music if you need something for a film. We need to send a message to the recording companies that they don't own everything by using and promoting the things they don't own (and, preferably, use libre licenses). It is unfortunate that creators have been betrayed by their recording companies, but it is partly their fault for signing away their rights. We need creators to stop selling themselves to recording companies. Only when control is relinquished from the hands of those whose only objective is money can we have reasonable dealings with rights holders. > Yes, it's a pain. And frankly, pre-synched versions of "Sita" will > surely be "pirated" and circulating before this grand scheme could > come to fruition. But what a great alternative! What a way to raise > awareness, too. It would be if not for these legal issues I pointed out. If I'm incorrect and they are not problematic, I would be happy to be proven wrong. Denver 4. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080715-popular-wow-automation-tool-infringes-blizzards-copyright.html _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
