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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: "Murdering" Imax prints
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-21-2012 10:15 PM
With any copyrighted material, the copyright restricts COPYING it, and EXHIBITING it. That's it. There is NOTHING in the copyright law that addresses the physical medium on which copyrighted images or sound are recorded. It's not illegal to possess the FILM, only to exhibit it or copy it. You are doing neither.
The question then is only one of ownership and physical property rights. What comes into play here are the circumstance as to how that print has come into your possession. You didn't buy it, but there are many other ways one can take possession of something without buying it. Someone could give it to you -- in the famous case of Roddy McDowell, where the studios claimed that his film collection had to be "stolen property" because the physical prints were their property and since studios don't sell their prints, it means they were obtained by illegal means. How embarrassed were the Fox lawyers when the defense proved that 16mm prints (the bulk of McDowell's collection) were sold all the time and indeed McDowell actually bought some of his own picture from Fox.
His defense lawyers proved that prints are transferred all the time; directors and cinematographers all get prints of their work. So the case revolved around the fact that there are may ways in which prints legally find their way into the hands of people in the industry. Pints obtained by those various legal means are property like any other property, copyright notwithstanding. Copyrighted material means as much as the copyrighted images from movies that appear in a newspaper. A studio can't claim they own that newspaper because their copyrighted images are contained on it (well, maybe Disney would....). Point being, the individual who obtains possession legally of a print (abandonment is one legal way you can obtain a print), there is nothing preventing the sale of it, giving it away, or just throwing it in the garbage.
The person who has gotten it as a gift or who walks by and picks a print out of the garbage dump takes legal possession of it, at least in most jurisdictions. Abandoning property -- putting something in a dumpster or at the curb for garbage collection shows intent to abandon and to relinquish ownership -- can't be undone because the original owner has a change of heart (again, at least in most jurisdictions -- some may have time and/or value constraints); the owner can't come back a year later and say, I want the couch back that I left on the curb because I still own it. Doesn't work like that, as the studios found out -- Roddy McDowell was never charged or convicted of anything. He discovered that the films he bought from Fox had an agreement which he had signed but never read, which said they always retained ownership, but as the case had fallen so far down the tubes, they couldn't even press that because it was such an obscure clause in a hugh "Master Contract" kind of thing with 6 point type. Funny thing was, at this circus of a trial, it came out that half the A list stars and certainly most of the big directors in Hollywood all had print collections -- Rock Hudson, Elizebeth Taylor...most of his friends. What were the studios going to do -- arrest directors and major stars?
If the producers of that print of LOCH claims it's still theirs, then the question is, was it stolen? If so, did they ever report it stolen to the police? Or did they ever report it to their insurance company as lost? Without those actions to show that the intent was never to relinquish ownership and with no steps taken to affect retention of ownership, then it becomes a prima facie case of abandonment, and as I said, under most torts and statutes, the person retrieving abandoned property receives full ownership rights. And I say again (even though studios love to use the boogy-man of The Copyright Law and the big bad red FBI label to scare everyone), copyright has NOTHING to do with collectors' prints, unless you are making copies of them -- fat chance of that with an IMAX print! Fat chance anyone will ever be able to show it illegally as well.
I am not a lawyer (and I don't even play one on TV) so take what I say with as much or as little salt as you like, but I do know pretty much of what I speak given my close proximity to this particular topic and to some FBI agents in NYC who deal with this particular issue regularly.
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