Nothing ethically wrong with watching His Girl Friday on YouTube! The film has been in the public domain for a while, but the 1928 play The Front Page on which it’s based was copyrighted for ages, which meant the film effectively couldn’t be screened without permission. However US 1928 copyrights expired this year, so the film is now fair game worldwide (and of course has been so in NZ for many years because of our shorter copyright term).
I would venture that ripping a Criterion Blu-ray that was the result of extensive and expensive restoration (especially the sound which is on another level now) feels on the unethical _side_. And don't get me started on the dodgy colourised version that even has the cheek to run ads ...
Whether restoration actually creates a new copyrighted work (the “sweat of the brow” argument) is a big topic of conversation in the heritage sector, where museums scan or photograph thousands of public domain works, correct and clean them up, all at great expense. The legal consensus is no, they have not reached a threshold of creativity required to make some new work they can control the distribution of, especially if the goal is to create a “faithful” restoration. Public domain stays public domain. Not good news if you want to make money packaging and reselling it, so the bonus features, commentary, etc become the added value.
This is important because some UK art museums have claimed copyright on their (beautiful) photos of old masters, and charge significant reproduction fees, making if prohibitively expensive to publish art history scholarship.
I understand the legality of it – and the benefits of accessibility – but something sticks in my craw about someone using a Criterion restoration to make a crappy AI colourised version of a film and then taking the advertising dollars for themselves.
Nothing ethically wrong with watching His Girl Friday on YouTube! The film has been in the public domain for a while, but the 1928 play The Front Page on which it’s based was copyrighted for ages, which meant the film effectively couldn’t be screened without permission. However US 1928 copyrights expired this year, so the film is now fair game worldwide (and of course has been so in NZ for many years because of our shorter copyright term).
I would venture that ripping a Criterion Blu-ray that was the result of extensive and expensive restoration (especially the sound which is on another level now) feels on the unethical _side_. And don't get me started on the dodgy colourised version that even has the cheek to run ads ...
Whether restoration actually creates a new copyrighted work (the “sweat of the brow” argument) is a big topic of conversation in the heritage sector, where museums scan or photograph thousands of public domain works, correct and clean them up, all at great expense. The legal consensus is no, they have not reached a threshold of creativity required to make some new work they can control the distribution of, especially if the goal is to create a “faithful” restoration. Public domain stays public domain. Not good news if you want to make money packaging and reselling it, so the bonus features, commentary, etc become the added value.
This is important because some UK art museums have claimed copyright on their (beautiful) photos of old masters, and charge significant reproduction fees, making if prohibitively expensive to publish art history scholarship.
I understand the legality of it – and the benefits of accessibility – but something sticks in my craw about someone using a Criterion restoration to make a crappy AI colourised version of a film and then taking the advertising dollars for themselves.