Police Arrest Three For Posting 10 Minute Movie Summaries On YouTube (torrentfreak.com) 125
AmiMoJo shares a report from TorrentFreak: Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called "fast movies" to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue. According to Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), there are channels with hundreds of uploads being viewed tens of millions of times, often with a for-profit motive. This means that they may fall outside traditional "fair use" style exceptions.
Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.
Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.
The Spoiler Police at work (Score:5, Funny)
It must be a sub-section of the Fashion Police.
Sometimes it's necessary (Score:2)
It's helpful to have condensed versions of intolerably bad movies [youtube.com] that nonetheless have some redeeming qualities.
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Frodo gets a cool ring from his adoptive uncle. It really belongs to a Big Bad, who needs it to conquer the world. Henchmen chase Frodo and pals across Middle Earth. Frodo's weird cousin N-times-removed eventually bites off Frodo's finger and falls into a volcano, destroying the ring and saving the world.
It's all a question of what qualifies as the "actual content", innit? That's a lot less than ten minutes of content right there!
Fortunately, the law makes it perfectly safe to debate how much "actual content" is in a movie, and (at least in the US) even use short bits to illustrate one's criticism. What it doesn't allow is re-editing somebody else's work without permission to only show the parts that you think are important or appropriate. That's why CleanFlicks lost.
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You'll be hearing from my lawyers.
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Case in point, a movie based on actual events. You're always going to know how it ends and what the storyline is because that information is already known and published before the movie was even made. What you're getting from the movie is a dramatisation of the story.
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***SPOILER ALERT***
Yeah, I never bothered watching Titanic after I read how it ended. Oh no, wait, I didn't bother because it was crap.
(yes, I can say it was crap with authority, because it was on TV once, and I did indeed watch most of it).
Oh come on, you can't say that about "Titanic"! Do you have any idea how much mileage I've gotten holding my SO's hand and saying: "I'll never let go [SO]! I'll never let go!!!", and then peeling their hand away while making cracking noises? Totally redeeming.
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Two people fished in by that line. Impressive.
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Sorry, which line?
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If a 100min movie only has 10minutes of actual content, I think people should be discouraged from paying for such crap.
And if you are of that opinion, you can avoid paying for that crap by the simple technique of not going to the movie.
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That's the point tho... How do you know the movie is crap without watching it?
The trailer is going to be designed to make the movie look as good as possible, because it's designed to sell the movie. The trailer and other advertising could even contain all the good bits and the rest of the movie is total crap.
The only way you can find out, is through unbiased third party reviews and summaries. And that's exactly why the movie studios don't like this - summaries/reviews make it easier to sell GOOD movies, and
You can say that about anything [Re:Well...] (Score:2)
You can say that about anything. What if you go to a concert and decide that the Rolling Stones aren't as good as they once were-- does that mean you don't have to pay? How do you know that a meal at your local restaurant isn't crap? Does that mean you should be able to eat free, and decide whether or not to pay later? How about a baseball game and your team sucks? Can you say "ok, I didn't like it so it's free". What if you buy a car and decide it's not to your liking? What if the hard disk you buy is sl
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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So I guess all the great classic literature is 'crap', because Cliffs Notes manages to condense them to a few pages?
Market (Score:2)
This is why companies, and industries, implode. Consumers are telling companies they want short entertainment. Youtube is living proof of this. That company that imploded tried monetizing this, but couldn't for a ton of reasons. However, media companies are sitting on almost pre-made short entertainment they could be leveraging, but aren't.
It's not new at all. Movie companies were worried that TV would destroy feature length movies, then realized they could make money off of old movies by licensing them to
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I haven't seen any of their 10 minute cuts, but I'll chime in to give another perspective.
Baseball games are too long and slow for me. Yet, I still enjoy watching the occasional game. In Canada, they started doing a compressed version of the games; Blue Jays in 30. Basically a full baseball game in 30 minutes.
That 30 minutes is enough content for me in terms of baseball watching for me to get the full picture of the game. It will contain all the major plays in the game.
Now I personally enjoy watching movies
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If a 100min movie only has 10minutes of actual content, I think people should be discouraged from paying for such crap.
We used to complain about having to buy a whole album to get the one song we wanted and ten more that suck. This seems like a logical extension. I don't even have the time or attention span at this point to watch a whole movie anyways.
It's not exactly a rare occurrence for a official trailer to show all there is to show in movie and after you pay for a ticket you find out the rest is just fluff.
That's the norm. Official Trailers basically ruin the entire movie. Remember that Terminator sequel where John Connor was actually a Terminator? Yep, didn't bother watching it after they gave away that part.
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You're free to make your own 10-minute movies with your own content and totally own the box office. But making a 10-minute movie (especially for profit) with someone else's content requires that you get permission from the content owners. Without that, it doesn't matter how much vigilante editing you think is justified: it's illegal theft of content. If the movie industry is indeed a steaming pile, as you suggest, consumers are free to just watch the published trailers and skip the theater.
The best thing about trailers ... (Score:2)
If the trailer (or 10 minute summary) shows a TV programme or film is crap, then it helps the audience avoid making the mistake of watching it. As such it acts like a public service.
Not only should they be allowed, they should be encouraged.
Re: The best thing about trailers ... (Score:2)
avoid making the mistake of watching it
Your 'mistake' is a movie studio's profit. This is why their trailers are chopped up garbage.
Small fish (Score:4, Funny)
You might be asking "why would police arrest people for doing something like this?" You might even be naive enough to think that this is a non-crime not worth prosecuting, let alone policing. But you're clearly viewing this as a game of checkers, oblivious to the complex four-dimensional chess match these heroic law enforcement officers, pawns of the almighty benevolent media conglomerates, are performing before our very eyes.
They have clearly targeted these small-time operators in the hopes that they'll turn state's evidence against the notorious Spark Syndicate - and later, the hope is that those in the Spark Syndicate can be played off of their rivals in this ghastly and monstrous enterprise, the fearsome and notorious Cliff's Cartel.
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I would guess it's because they monetized the videos. In the UK copyright infringement is a civil matter, the police don't care unless it's done commercially. So the guy selling bootleg DVDs down the market might get arrested, but someone sharing a movie on a P2P network will only get sued and the lawsuit will probably fail in court.
Seems to be similar in Japan. In fact a great deal of copyright infringement is tolerated and even encouraged, with fan works seen as free publicity and essential to creating a
Re: Small fish (Score:2)
Someone in Japan needs to make a movie about this. That way the police and courts will be infringing should they reuse the plot line.
For animes based on weekly mangas (Score:2)
This comes down to 1 minute movies.
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Even better, you can surely find a way to summarize multiple ones at the same time. Villain (becomes)/(reveals self to be) more powerful than previously shown, hero goes on quest to become more powerful/learn new fighting move to counter. Villain actually has not yet revealed true power. Hero goes on quest to become more powerful/learn new fighting move to counter.... That has to be be very highly compressible.
Japan doesn't have Fair Use (Score:2)
In the USA we have the concept of "Fair Use". In Japan they have the concept of a "Moral Right". Yeah, uh-oh.
Sorry film students. (Score:2)
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Cliff Notes can get permission (by paying for the rights) from the copyright holders to produce the summaries.
Stories are more than just plot. (Score:2)
Being that for thousands of years we have been getting stories with basically the same plot over an over. Where the best version of that plot was the version you encountered when you were the ages of 10-20 years old (no matter what your age is now) The older stuff just doesn't seem to connect to your life style, while the newer stuff is just blatant ripoff of your favorite stories just spiced up with the new Buzzy trends.
Let look at some pop-culture movies of different times (Using pop-culture, because of
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>4. Emerson: How connected do we feel with the Story World?
Serendipitous typo that invokes the full essence of Romanticism in about 10 words?
I'd love it for TV series seasons (Score:2)
I'd love if there were 10-minute recaps for TV series seasons. I have abandoned some series because I have forgotten what has happened while waiting for the next season and can't be bothered to watch it again. :D
I think the first time it happened to me was the series 100, which I remember enjoyed watching in the first season, and then sat on the Season 2 premiere and I remembered NOTHING - like who are these people, what are they doing?
There were some series that actually did produce nice recaps (I think Lo
Sad when more prison time for sharing than murder? (Score:3)
A satire I posted here on Slashdot almost 20 years ago, after sending it to the Senate Judiciary Committee related to proposals for more restrictive laws on digital copying requested by the MPAA:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
==== Microslaw ( https://pdfernhout.net/microsl... [pdfernhout.net])
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech
(Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government
for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by
the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American
views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to
assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary.
The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially
just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software
and media content has long been privatized to great economic success.
Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws
banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our
economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must
I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster,
that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has
confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to
release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates,
music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low
levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry
was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned
and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these
successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a
similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know
them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as
part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most
fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and
cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to
sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of
course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to
repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold
dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment
each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person
anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large
amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on
a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate
capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we
can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy
view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so
called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start
because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called
free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court
procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really
more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in
cost, not free as in freedom.
In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old
time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? --
around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are
made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by
large corporations like MicroSlaw. Such organizations need the
motivation of micropayments for application, discussion or ref
Re: Sad when more prison time for sharing than mur (Score:3)
Interesting. Could we get a ten minute summary of that?
Re: Sad when more prison time for sharing than mur (Score:2)
tl;dr
Could someone else perhaps provide a short summary of the above post using little snippets of it?
Sounds like Be Kind Rewind (Score:2)
A surprisingly fun and touching movie about basically this.
I like all of my movies SWEDED.
It's interesting that only movies are targetted (Score:2)
I'll keep my money (Score:2)
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Wikipedia Entries (Score:2)
That is usually where I go to get plots without having to watch an entire movie as it saves me time and money.
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As for how the medium is expressed, that obviously does matter. Playing the movie as is is forbidden and, in Japan, apparently summarizing the movie in the same medium is forbidden. How about creating a cartoon out of the movie and using that in the summary? Characters that look like characters in the movie in the summary? Etc....
Although, I imagine motive has a lot to do with it as well. If it is for profit then it is way more likely to be attacked than not fo
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Wikipedia also contains plot summaries. Is it illegal?
Giving away the plotline is not illegal. You may think it is annoying, but it is not illegal.
Taking somebody else's words and images to give away the plotline is the part that violates copyright.
If not then how exactly the way plot synopsis is expressed matters?
Because they have stolen somebody else's words and images to do so. It's using their words and images that matters.
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This particular part is covered by fair use doctrine. Those images and words are reused for purpose of commentary. I would argue that producing a heavily condensed plot summary is transformative reuse.
No. They provide no commentary. They simply repackage the work and decrease demand for the work. There is no commentary, no review, no critique involved.
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This is in Japan, and I don't know what their law is. However, in the US you are wrong. The definition of 'fair use' is:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determin
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You can claim or insist anything you want. Getting a court to believe or accept your claim is a different story. Generally courts take a dim view of people who think they have 'cleverly' found their way around the intent of a law.
In the US, fair use exists primarily because copyright can be in conflict with freedom of speech. So they carved out this exception so copyright can't be used to suppress legitimate discussion of copyrighted works. If it is necessary to use some pieces of the work for that disc
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Obligatory note: Fair use is a US legal concept and (somewhat controversially) far broader than the exceptions to copyright protection set out in the relevant international agreements, so it is largely irrelevant to events in Japan.
However, even if this were happening in the US, there is no way the reported actions would constitute fair use. Every one of the four factors would point strongly towards infringement.
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10 minutes out of a 100 minutes movie is not heavily condensed.
Also, "all the plotline" is not "heavily condensed".
Transformative reuse = maybe creating a 10 minutes nature documentary out of - let's say - "Legends of the Fall" (1994 movie) - might, could, heavily squinting and looking with a single eye, be counted as "transformative reuse" - but basically they just copied everything interesting from the movie and distributed it for profit.
Look at it this way - a company invests 100 millions dollars in a 10
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Re:HISHE (Score:4, Informative)
But a 10 minute summary edit of the entire movie that actually reveals the whole plot... I think that (legally and morally) there's cause to call that infringement.
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I would pay for that kind of thing if they stuck it on Netflix, for example. Some movies I'm either not sure I'm interested in or just want to get the gist of. Sometimes I use Wikipedia for the same purpose, check the basic plot without having to sit through the whole thing.
Same thing for TV shows would be handy. Rather than arresting these guys they should be giving them contracts to produce content.
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"giving them contracts to produce content"
Maybe so, but they are not producing content. They are just copying.
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As the summary notes they do add a voiceover, and the act of editing it down to 10 minutes creates a valuable derivative work.
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The Critical Drinker actually uses clips from the movies he reviews, but they are very short, not in any particular order and often repeated.
The Critical Drinker also frequently uses solely content from the trailer, which is why it loops so often. Trailers are too short for his verbal summaries, but he habitually uses as much trailer footage as possible, and sometimes uses solely trailer footage. Using the footage the studio themselves explicitly selected for the purpose of publicizing the movie goes a long way.
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Cinema Sins's "Everything Wrong With..." series typically spends 15-20 minutes lambasting movies from opening ("51 god-damn seconds of logos! ") to closing ("Roll credits! ") illustrated entirely with clips from the movie. But to the best of my knowledge the only take-down notices that have stuck were for the videos in which they included copyr
Re:Presumably it would be OK (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly. Copyright law working as intended, people who infringe copyright on a large scale for profit get busted and dealt with. News at 11!
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yes, you can even take short clips from the movie (within reason), but yuou cannot take the majority of the plot together with 10 minutes of copyrighted content and sell for profit and expect them to not come hunting for you.
Is that true in Japan? Lots of variations in copyright law over the world and a lot of the time it may come down to how a Judge rules.
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yes, you can even take short clips from the movie (within reason), but yuou cannot take the majority of the plot together with 10 minutes of copyrighted content and sell for profit and expect them to not come hunting for you.
And even then, it must be for critique or transformative in some way, such as making memes from it. Just straight up taking clips is no good. Add on top of that that is specifically designed to be the "good bits" so you don't need the full version makes it more clear. "How much is too much" depends on the work and the clips taken, but it seems like this would qualify as infringement.
I suppose someone can make the argument that its a "critique that there is only 10 minutes of actual content in the movie", bu
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It's basically a review of a movie containing less than 10% of the actual content. It's really no different to a trailer, except the bits shown have been chosen to give the viewer a summary of the story rather than trying to explicitly entice them to want to see the rest.
If the movie is good and interesting to the viewer, then watching the 10 minute summary might make the viewer want to see the entire movie. If the movie is lousy or not to the viewer's taste it will probably be enough to make them realise t
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Well, that and the fact the trailer is put out by the same copyright holder. You kinda missed that nugget.
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It's basically a review of a movie containing less than 10% of the actual content. It's really no different to a trailer, except the bits shown have been chosen to give the viewer a summary of the story rather than trying to explicitly entice them to want to see the rest.
It is absolutely not that. A trailer is intended to induce a commercial purchase; this "good bits" is intended to be a commercial (via ad revenue) substitute for the original purchase. And while a single clip might be fair use, "clipping out the boring bits" is not.
On top of that, Japanese copyright law is actually quite weird. Trademarks and actual clips are strictly regulated, without any real conception of "fair use." On the other hand, derived works (especially in manga) are massively looked the other w
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It's really no different to a trailer, except the bits shown have been chosen to give the viewer a summary of the story rather than trying to explicitly entice them to want to see the rest.
Well... Trailers often contain scenes either not in the movie or presented out-of-context. They're ads designed to suck you in, not (necessarily) accurately represent the product -- I mean -- movie.
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Re: Presumably it would be OK (Score:4, Informative)
I can only speak as to US law, but there are limits.
There are several different rights that together comprise copyright, and one of them is the right to prepare derivative works. For example, the movie of a book is a derivative work. But so is a summary (derivative works are defined at 17 USC 101 as including abridgments and condensations).
The usual way to try to get around this is fair use, but it is limited and doesn't provide the most solid footing. Otherwise infringing uses that are fair are not infringing. There's a four-part test to determine fairness, but it's not mathematical; no one factor is determinative and it doesn't come down to how many factors are on your side. The test is mainly to help illuminate fairness, is all.
First, what is the purpose and character of the use? In this instance, where the uploaders are likely trying to get ad revenue, it's commercial. That weighs against fair use, though commercial fair uses are quite common.
Second, what is the nature of the work? Here, the works are fictional, which weighs against fair use. If they were very factual (like reference books or histories) that would lean the other way.
Third, the amount and substantiality of the part used in relation to the whole. Ten minutes of a two hour movie isn't terribly much, but if it is the good bits, or if it tries to encapsulate the whole thing, then that seriously weighs against fair use. Personally, given how long movie scenes tend to be where there are other reasons for the use that are helpful, I'd be surprised if there's much need to go over a minute or two in most cases unless it's to capture a brief conversation or it's to deconstruct a scene to comment on the art and technique. But fair use is meant to be a catch all for uses that we can't easily contemplate or want to specifically legislate for. Anyway, 10 minutes smeared across the whole movie is almost certainly too much; it effectively captures too much.
Fourth, the effect on the potential market for the work. While there isn't a market for 10 minute clip compilations like this, it can he seen to have a negative effect on the market for the work. Why buy expensive movie tickets or PPV when you can get the gist for free? This also weighs against fair use.
So it's 0 for 4 in favor of fair use. That's not good for the people making the clips and they shouldn't be too surprised at what happened.
Yes, it would be OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Under US law, describing the movie content and stopping there would be questionable.
What?!? Describing the movie content (without using the actual words or images) is not questionable at all. Copyright law in the US protects the specific expression of an idea-- that is, the words and the images used to put it into tangible form. Yes, you can talk about a movie.
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Plot and character details are covered by copyright. It's why you can't put Mickey Mouse into your own cartoon. It's why some elements of Sherlock Holmes are in the public domain, but others are still protected. It's why you can't retell the story of, say, Pulp Fiction.
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People have been retelling stories for a long time. A story that probably originated in real events in feudal Japan over 300 years ago has been retold many times since, including two movies in the past decade alone starring big name Hollywood actors.
The extent to which copyright and other IP such as trademarks can protect the creative ideas underlying specific works -- such as the world and characters and events that an author might have introduced in works already published and intend to use further themse
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If you spend ten minutes telling the story of a single movie, without intentionally adding your own commentary or unique content or changing the nature of the story, you are almost certainly going to go into enough detail that you violate copyright. Either that, or nobody will want to watch your video because it's too slow and boring.
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If you spend ten minutes telling the story of a single movie, without intentionally adding your own commentary or unique content or changing the nature of the story, you are almost certainly going to go into enough detail that you violate copyright. Either that, or nobody will want to watch your video because it's too slow and boring.
And yet if your claim were actually true, every official and unofficial movie critic, would be behind bars.
The very words "spoiler alert" would become the ambulance driving in front of the ambulance-chasing lawyer.
And too slow and boring, isn't a crime. Otherwise, most of Congress would be behind bars with every movie critic.
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Say what? Exactly what 'official and unofficial' movie critics do not add their own commentary?
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Say what? Exactly what 'official and unofficial' movie critics do not add their own commentary?
They reveal a considerable part (spoiler) of the film. They quite often (spoiler) reveal the entire plot and storyline, which tends to go against your argument as you claim plot and character details are copyright protected (which they likely are, but we're not talking about someone stealing them and putting them in their own movie).
Hardly anyone changes the "nature" of the story when they review it (whatever that means). Sure, you could ignorantly try and paint Spiderman as the main villain, but you'd be
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As far as theft goes, Hollywood should pick up a fucking mirror before spouting off bullshit. They've been stealing and recycling storylines for the last decade. All we ever endure these days, is reboot after reboot. Pathetic.
What do you mean? Are you implying that it's not a coincidence that Volcano and Dante's peak came out at the same time, or Armageddon and Deep Impact, or Antz and A Bug's Life. No, it can't be.
Actually, I just looked this up to confirm my example and see if there's any backing evidence about how the films came to be and connections between them, and it turns out that there's a name for this: Twin Films [wikipedia.org] There's a big list of them. Some of them are a bit a of a stretch, but most of them really are not. Readin
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Can you read? First 'I' did not make any argument as to plot and character details. Second, the poster you directlty quoted said 'If you spend ten minutes telling the story of a single movie, without intentionally adding your own commentary or unique content or changing the nature of the story'. You then idoitically said that applied to EVERY movie critic. Well, NO actual movie critics do that. There is no need to change the 'nature' or the story, that is a DIFFERENT issue. You do know what the word '
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Read what you replied to (Score:2)
>> If you spend ten minutes telling the story of a single movie, *** without intentionally adding your own commentary or unique content ***
> if your claim were actually true, every official and unofficial movie critic, would be behind bars.
The job of a movie *critic* is literally to "adding your own commentary or unique comment". That's why they are called movie critics, not movie summarizers.
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You might be, and I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just pointing out that merely reproducing the essence of a plot is not in itself an infringement of copyright. You seemed to be suggesting otherwise in your previous comment.
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I thought the context of "versions roughly ten minutes long" was sufficiently clear. Obviously I was mistaken that other people would understand that context was relevant, and that a comment that mentioned Sherlock Holmes as a nuanced example should be read with an expectation of nuance rather than thinking a four-sentence comment was an exhaustive treatment of the law.
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Plot and character details are covered by copyright.
You've never heard of Cliff Notes [cliffsnotes.com]?
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That's a summary of a work not a new work with the same plot elements and characters.
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Here is the plot summary of Pulp Fiction on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Every other movie of note likewise has a full plot summary there -- retelling the story in its entirety. There's no more clearly, solidly allowed use-case than this.
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Certain elements of the more recent works based on them may be still copyright for those elements.
But you can do absolutely anything you like with any and all elements of the books.
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You're completely misunderstanding copyright. Facts, even facts about fictional creations are not copyrightable. As proof, consider Cliff Notes. If you were right, Cliff Notes would be illegal.
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No, you are completely misunderstanding copyright. For example, Sherlock Holmes as a master detective with his doctor sidekick Watson has fallen into the public domain. Sherlock Holmes wearing a deerstalker hat is (last I looked) still covered by copyright because that detail was introduced by one of the movies rather than the books. Discussing the character like this is fair use, but using it in a Sherlock Holmes style creative work would usually infringe copyright.
As I wrote earlier, there are a number
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Most CliffsNotes are on public domain works. I don't know whether they have license from authors or rights holders for newer works.
There are a ton of CliffNotes for books published after 1950. No evidence I saw of anything being "licensed", and it sounds highly doubtful that the authors would license such detailed writings about their works which basically enable students to make book reports without having to obtain, read, and take their own notes about the original books.:
Example
The Hunger Games Book 2 [cliffsnotes.com]
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Plot and character details are covered by copyright. It's why you can't put Mickey Mouse into your own cartoon.
In about three years, unless Disney manages to ram another copyright extension through, the copyright on the original Mickey Mouse cartoons will enter the public domain. That means that, although Disney may fight it and may try to abuse trademark law to stop it, it will be legal to put Mickey Mouse into your own cartoon then. In theory the "version" of Mickey mouse that you put into the cartoon would need to be the version that appears in the original cartoons. That gets kind of tricky though. The version i
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whereas modern versions have colored shorts. Disney might try to argue that you can't make a new cartoon with the mouse in colored shorts for example.
Only because the court system allows anybody to sue over anything, even those whom their argument has absolutely zero merit: the courts are still perfectly content to spend a lot of time and money as long as there's a plaintiff footing the bill to prosecute it -- and even if the defense would be successful, it can still take millions upon millions of dollars t
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Disney is definitely a litigious corporation with deep pockets and that certainly skews things in the courtroom. For example, technically speaking, Mickey Mouse is already in the public domain because copyright lapsed on one of his films because Disney failed to renew the copyright as was required at one time. The person fighting this battle in the 1980s lost his case due to the reasoning that the copyright on the earlier films protected the lapsed film. This seems to be based on the notion of character cop
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Plot and character details are covered by copyright. It's why you can't put Mickey Mouse into your own cartoon.
Plot is not a protectable copyright work nor is the idea of a character: the specific expressions that convey the plot are what can be copyrighted -- the Movie footage, or the Printed actual script of the movie, or a Book that movie was based on, etc, etc.
The copyright law does Not have any such class of copyrighted work called "the idea of the plot behind an audiovisual work", thus no protection
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micky is public domain now
citation needed
Michael Theodore Mouse is both copyrighted as well as trademarked.
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—Woody Allen
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...
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Sir, you are under arrest.