Werewolf TV Show Blocked From DVD Release Due To Music Licensing
from the promoting-the-progress dept
We were just talking about how DVDs of various TV shows, like The State and WKRP in Cincinnati were being crippled by music licensing rights that forced them to remove the original, classic music, and replace it with bland copies. However, in some cases, it's much, much worse. Michael Scott lets us know that some TV shows are being totally prevented from coming to DVD. The latest is the TV show Werewolf, which was apparently working on a DVD release, but the project has now been shut down, due to music licensing problems:The Shout Factory had to cancel the release because of two artists (which will remain unnamed) that would not play ball. Sony does not have the individual audio tracks, so they were unable to replace the songs, as the audio was mixed together. The two songs were featured over dialogue scenes that could not be cut. The Shout Factory's only option, even after spending a lot of time and money on it, was to cancel it and give the title back to Sony. If Sony had the audio tracks, it would have been easy to replace the two songs.It's still difficult to see how this makes any sense at all. It shouldn't require relicensing, and even if it does, it's plainly ridiculous for the musicians to refuse. It's difficult to see how this benefits them in any way.
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Theme songs....
I wonder if producers are now putting a "for all future distribution types named and un-named" clause in the contracts for music, and getting the distribution rights done in advance.
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Re: Theme songs....
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Big Mistake
Now that is a huge mistake.
He should be calling them out publicly.
Let the fans of the show give the greedy artists a shaming.
I for one would like to know, so that I could avoid the artists. However, it is probably safe to assume they are on some major label so I am already avoiding them.
The Shout Factory could just release a very simple one liner that states we cannot release the show because these two artists want a whole lot of money. Simple and factual. If the artists tried to sue over it then they would just get a nice little Streisand effect.
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Re: Big Mistake
No Free Publicity For you!
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Re: Re: Big Mistake
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Re: Big Mistake
Two artists cost an unknown number of other artists royalty payments. If I were one of the ones that reach an agreement, I'd want to know who kept me from getting a check.
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Re: Re: Big Mistake
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Have you ever SEEN that show?
Depending on the scenes they're talking about, there's a chance that the music these artists made was so plum god awful that they don't want it being repeated for fear that their children will be unable to procreate as a result.
Or, hey, maybe they're just stupid.
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In other news
"It's just sitting there unused," said Mad Prosecutor. "Why should I be prevented from using it just because I don't own the right to use it? I'm like, totally prevented from using the mountain. I had been planning to run a business letting people look down the side of the mountain, but my project has been shut down. It's difficult to see how this benefits anyone in any way."
I am very, very well acquainted, yet unconvinced, by the whole "scarce goods vs. infinite [sic] goods" line of "reasoning," so no need to argue along those lines.
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Re: In other news
Its just forced scarcity
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Re: In other news
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Re: In other news
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Re: In other news
Or, you might as well say:
"I am very, very well acquainted, yet unconvinced, by the whole "flat earth vs. 'round' [sic] earth" line of "reasoning," so no need to argue along those lines."
Convinced or not, reality is reality. There are substantial differences, both in reality and in law, between physical property and intellectual property. To say you are unconvinced of those differences does not mean they don't exist. It just makes you look stubborn and primitive.
Besides, your analogy is an exceptionally poor one in that, if the mountain was truly unused (unimproved/unmaintained) by it's owner, encroachment rights and/or government seizure could quite possibly make Mad Prosecutor's actions reasonable and legal. No only that, but the show was licensed from Sony, who, in this analogy, owns the mountain. The problem is, they let someone else plant a couple trees on it who now demands payment every time someone looks at said trees.
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Funny
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Re: Funny
They're only available as low quality WMV files and episodes 3, 10 and 26 are missing.
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Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
If you _want_ to buy the series, you can't because they can't release it.
..but if you go to one of many sites you can download the original airing, with commercials stripped, in handy dandy DivX or similar format, free of charge.
Of course it's those horrible people who want everything for free that is hurting the industry, it couldn't possibly be greed preventing them from even offering a product people clearly want to pay for, naw...
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Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
Me: "I want to buy this series on DVD"
Them: "You can't because we can't/won't release it"
Me: "OK, I'll download it from P2P then"
Them: "No! That's evil, you're stealing!"
Me: "....."
I "pirated" Night Of The Creeps and The Monster Squad while waiting several years for the DVDs to be released (more rights issues, as I understand it), and now own the DVDs that they're been released. I don't believe that the producers had any room to complain while they were actively refusing my money, for whatever reason.
Yet another flaw in the P2P = theft argument. If I'm sitting around waiting to pay them money and I can't for some reason, they can't also claim I'm stealing from them. It's a directly contradictory argument.
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Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
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Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
If my business model does not include income from a song because I refuse to release that song into the market, then I have *LOST* nothing when that song shows up on P2P networks.
I have *gained* recognition and publicity because there is yet another work of art associated with me.
There is a massive underground culture around move and tv scores. Not the edited, or sometimes re-produced, 60 minute CDs, but for the original unedited scores. Many of these scores are never released to the public for purchase, but they still hit the nets in various ways.
The studios have lost no potential sales, they have experienced no material losses, they have only gained a following of fans of a composer or a studio.
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Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
The Mona Lisa isn't for sale, but if someone were to offer free copies (applicable copyright issues notwithstanding), and you went and picked one up...is that stealing? Nope.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
Now if you distribute copies of someone else's photo without their permission, that would be another matter entirely.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. If you want legal advice on this, go see a lawyer.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
So far, the louvre isn't hurt by this.
--GJ--
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Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
I thought we were talking about Werewolf... ;)
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Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
I've only seen it in low quality WMV with three episodes missing. Have you actually see it available in better quality or are you just assuming it's available?
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Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
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Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
If you happen to know of a source for them, I'd love it if you could send an anonymous email to ydobon [AT] mail [DOT] com
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copied off the Air and 'shared' much better again....
Yeah, nice try. The WMV werewolf episodes range in size from 30MB to 800MB. The average size for a half-hour show recorded from HDTV and encoded into an Xvid AVI file is 180-240MB. That works out to 5.2GB - 6.9GB total. On a 6Mbit account, 7GB would take less than 4 hour to download.
Note that HDTV rips are typically not "HD", they're only taken from an HD source. If they were 720p rips, that would be a different story. Then, the entire series would come to around 43GB and take 17+ hours to download.
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The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
So, the rights originally granted were for TV only, and probably limited to a certain number of airings, and only in certain territories. Any other rights need to be negotiated separately.
So, the publishers and labels/artists who control the songs are entitled to ask for more money for the expanded right the producers are seeking.
Suppose someone wanted to rent out your backyard for a party on Saturday night. You quote them a fee of $1,000.
Then, they decide they want to move the party into the house, and also on the front lawn. Wouldn't you expect to be paid more for the bigger event?
The real bad news here is that the producers of the TV show didn't have the foresight to keep copies of the dialogue tracks without music. They deserve to be in this situation.
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Re: The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
"Suppose someone wanted to rent out your backyard for a party on Saturday night. You quote them a fee of $1,000.
Then, they decide they want to move the party into the house, and also on the front lawn. Wouldn't you expect to be paid more for the bigger event?"
Perfectly reasonable. However, the conclusion of your analogy is that the renters don't want to pay the price you're expecting, so you refuse them the party, your lawn remains totally vacant so you don't make ANY money, THEY don't get to throw ANY party, and the only party in town is now on the vacant lot next door, and it costs them nothing.
That just doesn't make sense for anyone.
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Re: The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
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Re: Re: The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
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Re: The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
People just want their culture, keeping it from them for such frivolous reasons is stupid.
But I guess it just goes to show how inept and incompetent entertainment lawyers are that deals can't be done to get these shows released in a timely manner in their original form.
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Re: The producers got what they paid for then... now want more.
No, not ignorance. I recognize how it's done. I just think it's stupid.
The producers of the show COULD HAVE gotten an "all media, in perpetuity" license when they first cleared music for the show
Well, back when the show was on, there was no additional market, so that didn't make sense.
Bottom line... the broader grant of rights costs more.
No, really, the bottom line is what's the point of blocking the DVD from coming out entirely? How does that represent any kind of win for the musicians? It represents only a loss.
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A la The Maxx
Too bad so many people try to stick their fingers in the pie - and expect a larger piece than is reasonable.
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Re: A la The Maxx
Who's it by? I see a set done by "Noir", but he states that he made it into widescreen, and so &%$#@! up the aspect ratio on it. I know I can fix it in a computer player, but it bothers me that someone would be so stupid as to distort the image just to have it fill the screen.
There's also a set of MP4 files that were ripped from MTV's site.
I suppose either would be better than the crappy copies I have now.
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It's good that they keep doing this
I'm a criminal, he's a criminal, wouldn't you like to be a criminal too?
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Audio editing
Obviously, none of the above should even be necessary, but find some way around the overreaching rightsholders and show them how powerless they are.
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But yeah, call out the people who won't license the music. There are few forces more powerful than angry former fans.
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I'll do it for free
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Screwing themselves
I want my culture as it was, dammit!
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Greed or arrogance
I don't see how people who do such things benefit from them any way whatsoever, and they just spoil things for everyone else.
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werewolf tv series
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WEREWOLF
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Cost of the title from Sony ?
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Had them from HD rips..then threw them away
Every day since then I keep saying "DAMN!" to myself.
Now I have to buy the doggone series again from a store online to get terrible quality just to have it in my possession again. DAMN!
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Werewolfs and Music
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One of the songs holding up the rights is Silent Running by "Mike and the Mechanics" Here's a youtube link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7W89I_V_g
It was a great song and very memorable in the tv show.
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mike don't need
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Here's a thought
It won't be original, it'll probably be crappy, but having crappy is better than having none. And honestly, how many scenes in the whole season did they use the music in? Likely just one each. That's probably just a few minutes worth. So you get a couple odd blips. In the end, still worth it. Purist vs getting it released. I'm all for the latter. Would it really be that much more effort to get this done?
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RE: Here's a thought by poster Wolfric
(I worked as an audio engineer for a radio program a few years back. I'll take out all of the music and leave the dialog in the two scenes in a day or two and I'll do it for free, just give me a closing credit).
Now did you even read what the problem is. apparantley not: If the "music" & "dialogue" was MIXED TOGETHER IN THE SAME TRACK...YOU CAN NOT STRIP OUT JUST THE MUSIC. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE !!!. That is like pushing Steroe to mono and trying to seperate the 2 from the one mono track. IMPOSSIBLE !!!
Now in response to wolfrics post. This is the one that does make the best sense. wether you are going to get the best quality or not. What you do is strip out the audio track entirely since bothe the music& dialogue is on the same track. Get a hold of the scrpit which sounds like they do have it. (No need to listen to the track if you have the script). then lay down 2 new songs from that era and either get that original cast member in if they are still alive or still willing to do a dub over or get someone else that can come closely to sounding like them and lay down the 2 Seperate tracks like they should have originaly done. thta way they can always go back and make adjustments by just stripping out the one audio track that is either the music or the Dialogue.
My Experience: working in the industry for over 20 years and having an audio specialist as a roomate from years back
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what an ass
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The 2 Artists
1 of the 2 artists holding things up are indeed "Mike & The Mechanics" (Paul Karak? Mike Rutherford?)
I don't know for certain who the second one is, but my guess would be Timbuk 3 ("The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades")
Shame them.
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Re: The 2 Artists
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problems
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audio...
Or
wherever song is there just mute it and put subtitle for dialog.thats it....
Or may be producers saw that only few will pay why else pre-order bullshit was there in amazon.
so 100-200 fans ready to pay would not cover the dvd making cost lol so blam it on song and don't release.
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Two Unnamed Artists Refusing to Budge
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Werewolf TV show
The jerk Music artist,s that are keeping this for bring released are Mike n the Michanics song Silent Running and Tmbuk 3 song Futures so bright/ i gotta wear shades. what jerkoffs.
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