Comments on: Bill Cheswick’s New Way to See Movies

By: Ken Bull

Ken Bull — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:49:35 +0000

@Nina

The problem with the old system is the “at some cost to the registrant” part… That cost could potentially be quite high, possibly preventing a small, low budget producer from obtaining copyright, while a large, high budget producer could, so the high budget producer gains rights that aren’t available to the low budget producer. A high budget producer could abuse this right by copyrighting a work derived (such as a compilation) from an uncopyrighted work by the low budget producer. If the copyrighted work is still similar enough to the original and is distributed widely, odds are pretty good that a customer will acquire the derived work first, and have no interest in purchasing the original.

I like the idea of requiring registration and renewal for copyright, as well as shorter terms (I doubt much software would survive a seventy year term when the hardware it runs on is obsolete in five for example), but it must be low cost or free to be fair.

By: Paley & Doctorow argue over Non-Commercial licenses

Paley & Doctorow argue over Non-Commercial licenses — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:10:26 +0000

[...] Sings the Blues I couldn’t possibly have imagined, like this sculpture in India, this amazing every-frame-of-the-film poster, and this bicycle wheel video display, all of which are technically “commercial use” and would [...]

By: Give It Away And Pray: Maybe Not A Business Model, But Still Important For Artists | PHP Hosts

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:50:52 +0000

[...] incorporated into some amazing creative projects I could never have imagined. Bill Cheswick’s every-frame-of-a-movie poster and Star Simpson’s MonkeyLectric bike wheel display are just two examples. If I hadn’t [...]

By: Nina Paley

Nina Paley — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:28:17 +0000

That old copyright system, where everything had to be carefully registered (at some cost to the registrant), was a good idea and I’m in favor of returning to it, if there’s to be any “IP” at all.

By: Paul Gibbons

Paul Gibbons — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:07:04 +0000

In the silent era, in order to register a film with the copyright office, every frame had to be printed on a separate piece of photographic paper and submitted with the application. It’s interesting to note that as all the prints of many of these early films, produced on volatile nitrate stock, have been lost, the copyright records, rephotographed on an animation stand, allowed the films to be saved for posterity. I’m not arguing for the predations of modern copyright, as modern technology and the free market is quite capable of preserving films, it’s just ironic that the legal process in place at that time was used to save some of these early films.

By: Celia

Celia — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:20:34 +0000

I see a new trend in wallpaper!

By: Bill Cheswick

Bill Cheswick — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:56:32 +0000

We have a number of ideas about how to sell these, and are checking out printing costs, and AT&T’s role and interest, given that we work in AT&T Research, and our
IP belongs to them.

A key marketing question: what is a reasonable price for a 1×10 yard poster of a movie? How about wallpaper?

We are checking into general printing costs and print runs of various sizes.

There are many movies I’d love to see in this form: Star Wars, Roger Rabbit, Princess Bride, Fantasia, some old sweeping Technicolor classics, etc. I need to get permission to even try it (say, for our lab walls) which means I have to get in touch with copyright owners. I am not trying to pull anyone’s chain here.

There are a few Warner Bros. cartoons that are out of copyright, and they look terrific. Most of the rest of the stuff is uninteresting, or monochrome, which doesn’t show up as nicely.

As for your free market research, I’d love to try it. But I am not counting on AT&T being very cooperative: if it doesn’t appear on a phone bill, it takes a lot of extra work to get it going. I will keep working on this.

And Nina, thanks for your time and comments. I will crank out another version to your specs tomorrow.

ches

By: Karl Fogel

Karl Fogel — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:05:15 +0000

Bill — we’ll happily be your tester for commercial viability. Will the lab be willing to supply some at a rate we can afford to sell, if we give them complete data about the sales so they can decide whether they want to get in on this game?

The store at http://questioncopyright.com/ isn’t here to corner the market; it’s here to demonstrate that selling containers for free content works (c.f. http://questioncopyright.org/understanding_free_content). So we’re not territorial about this; we’re happy to do your market research .

By: Mike Caprio

Mike Caprio — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:03:15 +0000

I would love to see this with so many different films!! Star Wars, What Dreams May Come, Blade Runner…

By: Nina Paley

Nina Paley — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:14:36 +0000

I know. Bill developed it at a corporate lab, and its their job to offer it commercially – and they haven’t yet. Of course the longer they take, the sooner someone else will reverse-engineer it and offer similar prints first.