Movie Companies Actively Suppressing Promotional Material
from the backwards-thinking dept
Brian writes "A New Jersey U.S. District Judge ruled that movie trailers are protected under the original copyright of the movie they are taken from. The ruling strikes a blow at fair usage and more notably the business model of Video Pipeline, who offered streaming video trailers via the Internet. The judge explained, in the 24 page opinion, that fair usage does not protect a company that produces its own trailers of movies and streaming them without permission from the movie's original copyright holder. While I agree that the permission to distribute movie trailers should be in the hands of the original creator, I don't understand the desire to enforce that right. After all, the purpose of movie trailers to make people want to buy the movie. If you allow people to freely share and distribute your movie trailer you would gain countless amounts of free publicity." Great analysis. Technically, yes, the movie studios own the rights. However, they are promotional material! The whole point of promotional material is to get it out there as far and as wide as possible - especially with something like a movie trailer.
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it's the lawyers, no doubt
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