copyright Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Advertising company The Foundry is in hot water with Disney over a risque booze ad using Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that shows the princess in bed with her little friends as the obviously nude and rumple-haired "Ho White" blows an after-sex smoke ring. According to the British publication Telegraph, "the loveable dwarfs Sleepy, Happy and Doc are rebranded Filthy, Smarmy and Randy - supposedly to represent different types of drinkers." (I'm wondering why Grumpy is still grumpy, but perhaps it's because he's off at the other end of the bed? I digress.)

Disney was rather displeased with this ad for Australia's Jamieson's Raspberry Ale, which uses an "anything but sweet" tagline. (The official website is down.) The agency claims that it's had "a little bit of contact" with Snow White license-holder Disney, but I have a feeling it's been more than a little. I mean, Disney releases those classic DVDs every, what, five years and then closes the vaults once again?

Generally North American advertisements are more prudish when it comes to sex, so while the general US consumer (like, say, me) might find this ad stupid and sexist, it seems the greater concern is the copyright issue. However, It's highly unlikely that Disney would have licensed the image of Snow White to be used for this ad campaign, anyway.

However, slutty Snow White costumes for Halloween? I guess Disney licensed those! (Ahem, see below ...)

When faced with copyright lemons, Sita Sings the Blues creator Nina Paley made some delicious lemonade. Since Sita uses songs in the film by Annette Hanshaw that are copyrighted, and as an indie filmmaker she can't afford to purchase the rights to them, her hands were tied when it came to distribution. So she came up with a plan that worked with (and around) the copyright issues so the movie's admirers could see the lovely film for themselves. Read a more detailed explanation of the issue here at Question Copyright. [Edited to add: Nina explains on her blog and in the comment section below: "Sita Sings the Blues is 100% legal. I am free to release it commercially, which is why the film is gaining a number of commercial distributors in addition to its free sharing/audience distribution, which is also legal, and wonderful." Read the full explanation here.]

Not only is her beautiful film available to watch online for free, it was also briefly available on PBS last March in for lucky viewers in NYC.

But now Paley has gone a step further with it comes to using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license that is really cool for creative types -- you can download her source files for free to make your own mashups, add Sita-tweaks to your own creative ventures, and do whatever else online arty folks do with Flash files.

If you've been following some of my posts recently -- and you should be -- I've been bringing you some of the latest bits of news regarding the trials and tribulations of would-be Internet content king YouTube. For the last couple years, the site has had huge numbers of users and generated millions of dollars of free publicity for Hollywood studios and their products. And even though the site has also had its share of troubles as well, it had still mostly managed to avoid anything really unpleasant -- that is, until now.

According to CNN, Viacom, parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, filed suit against YouTube and its parent company Google Tuesday. The suit alleges that YouTube has "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times." If that's true, what does Viacom want from Google and YouTube in the way of damages? How about a cool billion dollars. Yes, I said billion. In addition to money, Viacom also wants an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement and to take down any and all Viacom-owned content from the site.

In a statement also released on Tuesday, Viacom said about Google and YouTube: "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws." Harsh words. At the moment, this doesn't look like something that'll be settled quickly but I think it will be settled eventually. Although, by the time it is, I'm sure the copyrighted content Viacom is so interested in protecting will have shown up on countless other sites all over the Internet. So, in the end, Viacom 's lawsuit will probably accomplish very little and the only people that will really benefit are the lawyers.

I don't have HBO -- I've got just enough cable to get decent network reception and to enjoy local cable access shows. And yet, having grown up in the New Orleans area, I was dying to see Spike Lee's documentary about post-Katrina New Orleans, When the Levees Broke, which aired on HBO late last month. I've been checking the HBO, Amazon, and Netflix websites to determine when a DVD might be released -- it seemed to me that if ever a day-and-date release was warranted, this would be it.

Last week, BoingBoing reported that someone had posted the documentary to YouTube in 26 parts. (The footage has since been removed.) Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog picked up the story and contacted HBO to find out when the four-hour documentary might be released on DVD. HBO couldn't provide a date because "there are lots of tricky rights and clearance issues with the movie." I don't understand this at all -- When the Levees Broke was shot within the past year, and surely any permissions would have been for DVD as well as for broadcast? Would HBO be short-sighted enough not to see the potential for DVD? I'm not paying for full cable and HBO just to watch a single movie, but I would buy this DVD in a heartbeat if it were available right now.

Risky Biz compares the problem (and the subsequent illegal downloads available on the Web) to the situation with the 1987 civil-rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, which isn't available on DVD because the rights expired and were too expensive to renew. Isn't it time to re-examine the fine points of copyright law and the way documentaries are affected? In the meantime, I suspect that many people will resort to finding internet downloads to watch otherwise-unavailable films like When the Levees Broke.

The NY Times is reporting that the six largest Hollywood studios are banding together in the fight against piracy. They'll form a consortium called Motion Picture Labortories (MovieLabs for short), and with a joint investment of $30 million over two years, the group will work to push the creation of various anti-piracy technologies. Among the innovations tentatively in the works: illegal file transfer blocking over business and campus networks, and the creation of video cameras that would theoretically shut down if turned on in a movie theater. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but come on – how are we supposed to enjoy Talk Like a Pirate Day when everything related to piracy is under attack?