H.I. No. 2: Copyright Not Intended: Difference between revisions

'''Brady:''' It's always a mix-up, "we meant to put the embed- embedded YouTube video in, we'll replace it now", so they take out their version in the player, and replace it with your YouTube version, but of course by then it's no longer on the front page of the- of the website and all the impressions have happened and all the traffic has gone away, and oh,-

'''Brady:''' I had one, I had one video that was, um- oh, I could say what video it was, it was the one where I went into the- the Bank of England gold bullion vault. Uh, and obviously that was- that's not an- a thing you see every day,-

'''Brady:''' So, a few people wanted to use it, and I had one newspaper contact me and say "can we use the video in an article", uh, "and we want to put it in our own player" and I said "well, no can you please use the YouTube player so that if people watch it, you know-"

'''Grey:''' [chuckling] Um, I- I would just go- I would go back to um, one- one of the- the little notes that I wanted to make, is, um, the advantage of allowing copyright to expire. And, you know, you talked about "why should people be able to build on- on George Lucas's stuff?"

'''Brady:''' YeahOh yeah, great movie.

'''Grey:''' Um, which is one of those movies when I first saw it, I- you know, I thought this was just the dumbest movie ever made, and for anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend that you do watch it, um, but it is- on the surface, it is basically a movie about the dumbest California Valley girls you've ever seen.

'''Grey:''' Uh, and- and the exploits of their life. Um, however, later on I came to find out that the- that clueless''Clueless'' is a remake of Jane Austen's ''Emma'', right? That it- it is the exact plot of ''Emma'', just moved to this different setting, and once you know that, I think the movie ''Clueless'' becomes kind of brilliant. Um, I think it's-

'''Brady:''' And-and famous.

'''Grey:''' Yesyes, I- I- I will totally admit that- that- that does sound terrible.

'''Grey:''' Heh-heh, don't get me started on- on Shakespeare. Um but,- so I- but,- so this is an example where I think clueless is the kind of movie that could be made, right, because the copyright on Emma had expired.

'''Grey:''' And, you can do interesting things with that story by moving it to a different setting. andAnd I think that there- there is cultural value in being able to do new things with iconic characters, right? That I think at a certain point, very successful films and very successful books, they become part of the culture, and- and that is also why I'm kind of very much for some eventual limit on copyright. Uh, that- so- that- so that more can be done with these things in the future. Um, and my- a second example that I have which, I only recently discovered and then I had one of these, uh, binge watching sessions is the BBC's remake of ''Sherlock'' the Sherlock Holmes series,-

'''Brady:''' I mean ''Sherlock'' might not be the best example because I know there's lots of clever, nuanced nods to the Conan Doyle books, but, is this not just a case- again and I know ''Sherlock's'' not the best example but I'll- I'll run with it, is this not a case of someone, you know, some clever story tellers and good actors and good directors making a brilliant piece of film,-

'''Grey:''' Yeah, and I think that's where a lot of the resentment comes from, is- is people are saying, you know, nobody begrudges making those new movies, it's like "oh god", you know, or I think nobody rational does.

'''Grey:''' [chuckles] I- I would say, I hold no- I hold no ill will in my heart for the making of those movies. Like, he- this is the same thing, they just- they in my mind just fall into the category of the bad things. I don't have to watch the bad things, I saw them once, I will never see them again. Um, but what I-

'''Grey:''' And- and that's- that is- that is the reason why I picked George Lucas as an example in- in my video is because this is such a fundamental problem it's like, if there were limited copyright, there would be hope of the original format of the movies entering back into- into the world. And this is one of the reasons why Congress has extended copyright protections is because their argument is, it gives the creators uh, encouragement to preserve their original works for longer. And there's some interesting data that says that's not actually the case, that what happens is the original works just get lost over longer periods of time, um, but in this particular case with George Lucas, it's also very obvious that the original work gets distorted and, you know, it is increasingly hard to try and find "as it aired in 1977" versions of the original movie. Um, I, personally, have never seen ''this thing'', but I have ''heard'' that on the Internet, you might be able to find somewhere a thing called "the Star Wars despecialized editions", where superfans have taken the current Star Wars movies and tried to make them as close as possible-

'''Grey:''' I think there would be- there would be problems with that, but I think that is preferable to a world with zero copyright protection. Um, and so that- that- that is kind of one of the ways that- that gets me to this "I am for limited copyright protection, I am NOT for no copyright protection". Um, but I- I'll put a link in the, uh, the blog post for this, uh, episode, but there is's- there is a very very interesting TED talk by a woman talking about the fashion industry, and how in the United States at least, fashion designs do not have copyright protection at all, so, the fashion industry is a world where there is ''zero'' copyright.

'''Brady:''' I think, if nothing else, we have shown that it is complicated.

'''Brady:''' It was good talking to you mate, catch you later.