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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Legal? Showing DVDs for free?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-08-2004 01:35 AM
quote:
The owner recognized the fact that showing the DVD was illegal, but assumed that his/her booker had ironed out the legal issues. After the booker okayed it, the owner put it in the calendar.
The booker is (or at least, should be) acting as the copyright owner's agent, so presumably the venue has paid a non-theatrical hire fee, or (s)he contacted BBC Worldwide who gave permission as a goodwill gesture (unusual, but not unheard of).
In reply to Charles Dale Carter's point, different countries have different copyright legislation, and I'm no expert on the US. In Europe, there are basically two models: ours, which largely follows the North American principle of defining copyright as the economic ownership of intellectual property (in other words, the person who meets the financial costs of a work's production is its de facto copyright owner); and the French 'droit d'auteur' (right of the author) system, which takes as its starting point the idea that intellectual property cannot have any financial value (i.e. a production company cannot produce a 'good' film, however much money it spends, unless it has talented film-makers to work for it). The key differences between the two models and the different reasons for countries adopting one or the other are covered in Pascal Kamina's book Film Copyright in the European Union.
As for British law, it is the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by statutory instruments (acts of Parliament which make minor changes to laws without needing to tear them up and rewrite them) in 1995, 1996 and 2003. The key things it defines are what constitutes a 'film' for the purpose of copyright, who owns the copyright and how it can change hands, how long a film remains in copyright, what acts are restricted by copyright and what acts are permitted in respect of a copyright work.
Without going through the chapter and verse (which is contained in section 19 of the act), the bottom line is that any public performance which takes place without the copyright owner's explicit permission constitutes an offence. Given that the licence blurb on the back of most retail DVDs specifically restricts permission to showing them inside private residences, I'd guess that you would be on a sticky wicket if you tried to do so anywhere else. OK, you could potentially argue the toss over the definition of 'public', but when you have to hire lawyers to argue the toss for you, it would probably be a lot cheaper just to pay the non-theatrical rental fee!
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 04-08-2004 07:04 AM
<Looks at a couple of BBC DVDs>
Wallace and Gromit and The Best of Monty Python's Flying Circus VOL.1.
The discs themselves have a copyright symbol, and the words:
'BBC Worldwide LTD 1999 Subject to applicable laws' and
'BBC Worldwide LTD 2000 Subject to applicable laws'
so that doesn't tell us much. The cases carry the following text:
'Warning: this Digital Video Disc, including the sound track is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance, radio or TV broadcasting of this video is prohibited. Your attention is drawn to the copyright warning at the beginning of the programme.
That warning says:
'THE RECORDING, COPYING, LOAN, ANAUTHORISED HIRE, PUBLIC SHOWING OR BROADCASTING OF THIS BBC WORLDWIDE DVD-VIDEO IS PROHIBITED'
Still not clear exactly what is permitted, but I very much doubt that hiring a theatre and showing it to several tens or hndreds of people would be included, whatever the circumstances. I would certainly want to have something in writing in my hand before using a recording in this way.
The words 'Private home use only', which are used on many commercial DVDs do not appear on these BBC ones.
Between 1974 and 1999 I worked as an AV technician in a school. We showed many feature films, sometimes several in a week both to after-hours film clubs, and for educational purposes, e.g. films of set books for English lierature exams, and a wide variety of films to film/media studies classes. All of this material was on 16mm, there were many distributors, Columbia-Warner, Rank, Ron Harris and Guild were the main ones we dealt with. We typically paid about £30-£40, and all the distributors seemed to use the same terms and conditions for 16mm non-commercial exibition, an A4 sheet of rather small print, which specified exactly what we could and couldn't do for the licence fee we paid, simple.
Staff always seemed to be moaning about how much they had to pay for films, It sounds pretty cheap to me, I hired something from the BFI at Christmas and it's only £50 plus tax now. Anyway, the dawn of the video age was upon us, and the staff were delighted; they could go down to the local video shop, hire a tape for a couple of pounds, and show it to their chasses. They seemed to have great difficulty understanding when we explained to them that they couldn't.
I also got 'borrowed' by various organisations to run films on a similar basis, My mother had a friend who was the leader of the local pack of Brownies, and they often showed films. Strange organisation the Brownies, always struck me as being a sort of juvenile, female version of the Freemasons!
Anyway, in those days any organisation wanting to show a film could book one quite easily. These days things are different, I have't got a clue how you would go about showing a DVD legitimatly. Can you rent a DVD in the same way you could a film print? Can you go and by a normal 'home' DVD and then buy a separate licence to show it? If so, who from, and how? I suspect that the vast majority of screenings to such groups today are using normal 'home' DVDs or VHS tapes, with no licence for such use.
Towards the end of my time some of the distributors started listing a few films on Super-8, at first with magnetic tracks, and then with optical. I suspect they had problems with magnetic tracks getting erased, and few 8mm machines could play optical. By that time video was starting to take over anyway, so 8mm never got very far. In this country few places except cinemas had 35mm. Some long-stay mental hospitals had it, mainly dis-used long ago, but most other places used 16mm. Even the large college where I now work, which had a full outdoor projection box with fire shutters and everything only ever had 16mm installed. I acquired the carbon arc machines when the hall was converted into a library, and the projection box into a store. The nitrate regulations here were even tighter here than in many other countries, which meant that installing 35mm was neither simple nor cheap. By the time nitrate went out of use and the regulations started to be relaxed, 16mm was well established for non-theatrical use. When I worked at the school we did run 35mm once or twice, when we needed something not available on 16mm, we had to hire a portable machine, and put up with breaks between reels. In the '70s large fixed 16mm machines with up to 2000W xenons and 6k spools were quite common in places which, from what I have read here would probably have had 35mm if they had been in the U.S. Also, from about the time of the introduction of colour in the '60s, 16mm became the norm for television production.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 04-08-2004 10:47 AM
We were allowed to record BBC schools programmes, and there was a similar arrangement for ITV, but there were three conditions attached to the use of the recordings:
They could only be used for educational purposes.
They could only be used within the establishment by which they were made.
They had to be erased within twelve months of being made.
Later there was an arrangement whereby certain general service programmes could also be recorded.
We also bought a licence to record Open University programmes, I think this was done through Guild.
Things have probably changed somewhat in the last fifteen years.
Recording programmes off-air for personal use at home is now generally accepted, but making a copy of a commercial video recording is not. This complicates things somewhat where feature films are concerned. I cannot borrow a tape or DVD from someone and run off a copy for myself, but what if the same film is broadcast; can I record it off-air? What is the difference between making a copy of a friends tape, and effectivly making a copy of the television company master tape? What about television programmes which have been commercially released on video? I cannot copy the Monty Python DVD which I have, but I could record the material off-air when broadcast.
I believe that once everything in television/video is digital we will see restrictions put on what can be recorded; some sort of copy-prohibit flag transmitted in each frame, flag set, recorded will not record it. Indeed, I suspect that the ability to control use of programme material is one of the reasons why digital is being promoted so hard.
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Ray Kaufman
Film Handler
Posts: 16
From: San Pedro, CA, USA
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 04-11-2004 10:32 AM
Having run a hardtop for over fifteen years and now getting into the outdoor movies stage of my life, I’ve investigated or researched this subject extensively and know I’ve only scratched the surface. There are a lot of issues going on here, including licensing DVD, non-theatrical vs. theatrical and the definition of “public” performance, all of which can be very confusing if not a legal quagmire. From the little that I know or have been told by those that do –
Many distributors, but not all of them, will license the 'theatrical' screening of DVD’s, usually under the same terms as for film. (meaning you still have to have an MLA,) for public performance. Non-theatrical distribs including Swank, Criterion, (for Fox and others,) and New Yorker only tell people a little regarding the promotion of non-theatricals, but in essence, non-theatrical screenings are meant for closed groups of people; schools, institutions, airlines, cruise ships, etc. and the screening is not to be advertised, by title, to the public at large. Nothing wrong with promoting the event that the title is a part of. Likewise, the title can be a part of a calendar listing in a paper, but a separate ad, including the title is a no-no.
If the theatre owner rents his theatre for a private party and as part of the party, the group brings in a DVD to screen as part of the celebration, the question becomes, is this not a “private” event and not subject to the terms of public performance. The theatre merely becomes a substitute for a backyard. The theatre is just a place to hold a private function. It could well be a banquet hall. And this is but one example of the answers not yet clearly addressed.
I do know one thing. No matter what, stay clear of mouse house’s product in any form. The truths and myths run rampant on their ferocity to go after the little guy when copyright and exhibition rights are concerned.
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