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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Swank Motion Pictures encourages non-theatricals to switch to Swank Cinema Player
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-22-2008 11:51 AM
quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
My suspicion is that many venues will eventually buy their own consumer grade 1080p video projectors and rent blue-ray's from their local video store, rights be damned. In fact, for many rights will not be an issue due to fair use exceptions for class room use. I think Swank is shooting themselves in the foot on this one.
Unfortunately, Mitchell, students already do that all the time and with inpunity, especially in the dorms. The students' attitutde is, the dorm is their home and their home is their castle & they can pretty much do whatever they want there. At three colleges that I am familiar with, almost every dorm has a common room and a very high percentage of those have things like movie/beer & pizza nights using consumer video projectors and rental DVDs. They range from very simple setups with low-end projectors and portable screens to a few that have gone pretty wild with permanent setups, big screens and the higher-end projectors and elaborate sound systems, really mimicing the better home screening rooms.
Preactically speaking, trying to reign this kind of thing in under the copyright infringment law is a real up-hill and I'd say pretty much a loosing battle. Even the administrators have either no problem with it at all, or just look the other way - one actually told me that the school was what he called in loco parentis and the students, especially in each dorm were considered a family unit. He insisted that showing DVD rental movies for recreation in the dorm common rooms was not a violation. I am sure the MPAA would have a very different opinion on that, but then again, if you let those people have their way, they would want to implant monitoring chips in the back of everyone's necks and make even THINKING about a movie an infringment and punishable by death.
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John Hawkinson
Film God
Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 10-22-2008 12:26 PM
The key question here is whether it is a "public performance." It's clear that showing a movie in your apartment with some friends is not a public performance, showing it in a large auditorium and selling tickets is.
There is a wide space of grey areas between and there is not clear settled law about them. There have been cases where individuals and schools have settled out of court in some of them, but I think there has been very little litigation, and many of those settlements might not be viewed as reasonable.
On one side, most people agree that a single student watching a movie in his dorm room isn't a public performance, and similarly that a few friends in a room doing the same is not.
What about when a suite of rooms (say 4) have a small common room with a TV -- is that public? What about a small lounge on a single floor of a dormitory?
At the other end, a dormitory-wide common space with a nice video projecter is pretty close to a public performance, but what if one guy walks in with a DVD and watches a movie by himself on the big screen? What if a friend joins him? What if no more than would fit in his dorm room join him?
The answers aren't clear, and school administrations don't particularly want to get involved in this losing battle between student rights and legal liability, especially with a lack of presumption of good faith on either side.
There is a huge difference of opinion as to whether in loco parentis doctrine applies. I think most schools currently feel they do not act in loco parentis and treat their students as adults; this has serious implications for school liability in the event of alcohol incidents, etc., etc.
At MIT, the administration takes the view that advertised showings of movies qualify as public performance. That gets people upset on both sides (esp. depending on how you define advertising), but it generally means that studios (or their agents) are unlikely to litigate against non-advertised shows, since of course they are not advertised and they are not aware of them.
As a practical matter, those people who might want to show a DVD with a group of twenty friends are somewhat trapped -- even if they want to pay for a nontheatrical public performance license, they probably cannot afford $800 to do so, and even if they could, can't justify the expense versus $5 at BlockBuster (or cheaper). If nontheatrical licenses were more reasonably priced, I imagine a lot of these problems would disappear.
It should go without saying, but when we show films (35mm or otherwise) as part of our film program, we always have those shows properly licensed. Of course, we almost never show anything on DVD (and certainly never VHS)...
--jhawk
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