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.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 13 Aug 2003 @ 11:51pm

    it's the lawyers, no doubt

    Your mistake is in assuming that lawyers think logically.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.