copyright--pragmatic approach

[Steven Hill]

Dear colleagues:

One gets the impression that much of the SEELANGS discussion about copyright has
been conducted on the theoretical level, like a group of attorneys communicating
with each other in a legal seminar.

There's also the PRACTICAL side, of course.  As regards publications, films, and
other "products," that were created in the Russian Federation (previously in the
USSR), it seems likely that most such products do NOT have very many eagle-eyed
defenders (i.e., law firms) in the USA, zealously looking out to protect those
products from "encroachments" by impecunious little academics like us, who might
occasionally make modest non-commercial use of those products. (We call it "fair
use.")  If any such US law firms exist (hired by Russian authors, publishers,
distributors), they probably have much bigger fish to fry.

One might suspect that if a few Russian authors/publishers/distributors have gone
to the bother & are able to afford the expense (in US dollars) of hiring US-based
law firms to protect them, it would be to protect them against COMMERCIAL
encroachment, by great big US commercial publishers and commercial film-video
distributors.  That's a whole different world, which we poor academics do not inhabit.

In regard to film specifically, I am reminded of cases like the famous "It's a
Wonderful Life" (J. Stewart) and "Till the Clouds Roll By" (R. Walker Sr.), two
big, expensive US films that came  out appx. 1946-47, and were copyrighted by big,
legally-powerful studios based right here in the USA.  But even in those zealously
"protected" cases, the original studios through oversight neglected to renew their
copyright on its 28th anniversary (c. 1974-75), and both films slipped into public
domain.  Since then both "Wonderful" and "Clouds" seem to be all over the place --
many public-domain distributors have issued cheap copies and sold 'em on film, on
Beta, on VHS, you name it.  Look in the racks & bins of cheap video copies in
chain stores like Walgreen, Osco, etc.: "Wonderful" & "Clouds" have lots of
company, from the first "Farewell to Arms" & "Front Page" through "My Man
Godfrey," "Star is Born," & "Jungle Book" (Korda), to "Spooks Run Wild" [i.e.,
Bela Lugosi Meets the East Side Kids!] and "The Terror" (Jack Nicholson). Even a
few Russian films, such as "Potemkin" and "Ivan the Terrible," seem to have turned
up in the same ubiquitous category.

One gets the impression, from a PRACTICAL point of view, that once the genie is
out of the bottle, putting it back is not so easy.

Sincerely,
Steven P. Hill,
University of Illinois.
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