July 05, 2006

The Rat

Anyone who knows me, knows I have no love for Disney. What they did to my home state, the sneakiness with which they snapped up the real estate, that they mass merchandised (is that a verb?) my Pooh bear... the horror. And then, and then, there is the crass manipulation of copyrights to the detriment of classic films.

Now, these days, it's cheap and easy to restore old films with digital technology—it can cost as little as $100 to digitize an hour of 8 mm film. Many of these films could, in theory, be easily restored, and released, or put in an archive, for people to watch. But thanks to the CTEA, it's not cheap and easy. Anyone who wanted to restore one of these films would have to track down the owners of the copyright—no small task—and then hire a lawyer, lest they commit a felony. That's way too much effort and expense just to restore some arcane old movie that only a few people might enjoy. So no one does it.

And the worst part is that by the time the copyright for a lot of these obscure films expires, in 2019 and beyond, the film for these movies—which were produced on nitrate-based stock—will have completely dissolved. They'll just be canisters filled with dust. An entire generation of movies really will have vanished, never to be watched again. I guess it's hardly the most important problem on the face of the earth, but culturally, it's a tragedy, and a rather striking example of the insanity of copyright law.

Cute little Mickey my patootie. Not even charming like Mortimer. The Rat.

Via LGM.

Posted by binky at July 5, 2006 09:03 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Corporate Bullshit | Florida


Comments

Disney was one of my clients during my last tour of duty at the Big Investment Firm. They are easily the most screwed up major company I've ever heard about. Very, very strange corporate culture and priorities. Remind me to tell you about them sometime.

Posted by: jacflash at July 5, 2006 09:46 PM | PERMALINK

Years ago my sister did a walk through of their Orlando operations on a recruitment tour (she was the top student in her business school program) and what she learned was that she would never work for them.

Posted by: binky at July 6, 2006 08:29 AM | PERMALINK

The thing about Disney is that it's basically five companies under one corporate roof, and those five companies fight like badly-parented three-year-olds over EVERYTHING, which is not exactly a recipe for smooth corporate decision-making.

Posted by: jacflash at July 6, 2006 08:57 AM | PERMALINK
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