Subject: The Snow Walker (DVD)

I was thinking of making this offer this morning, and I guess Brian shamed me into it.

I'll put the DVD up on the lending library forum, and Brian gets first dibs on it. All I ask is that when everyone is finished with it, the last person on the list sends it back <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

just an idea, does anyone have a dvd/ vcr combo or a dvd recorder?

make a tape or dvd copy of it to send around instead of the master if its that hard to find.

if the copy is damaged its ok you still own the original.

>>make a tape or dvd copy of it to send around instead of the master<<

"Hi, I'm your friendly neighborhood lawyer from the MPAA. Sorry you didn't pay much attention to the "intellectual property" issues that have be steadily redefining American rights lately, but, um, you're under arrest for conspiracy..."

Thanks... PM sent... You have my mailing address. I'll send it on to whomever asks to be next in line.

points to that guy over there.

but isnt there some way to do that without breakin any laws?
its not like theres any profit being made or anything traded for its value.

>>but isnt there some way to do that without breakin any laws?
its not like theres any profit being made or anything traded for its value.<<

IANAL! (I am not a lawyer!)... of course, no disclaimer will protect you from lawyers anyway, but we keep trying...

To answer your question, though, from what little I've gleaned from just having a mild interest in the subject, I wouldn't think so.

I think the actual wording of the relevant copyright exceptions would be from the original "Betamax" decision, that states that you have the right to time-shift broadcasts for your own use, and the right to create one archival backup of commercial media for your own use.

Note that while this right is not currently in doubt, it is being challenged by repeated attempts to legislate it out of existence. The media companies really, really want you to pay, either on a subscription basis or pay-per-view basis, for every bit of entertainment in your life, and are looking for any possible way to make that happen. Ten years ago, would anyone have considered paying by the month for radio?

The term they typically use for the MOST prohibited activity is "distribution". Note that profit is irrelevant; Netflix or Blockbuster can buy a movie and rent it to a thousand people (certainly "distribution"), or "trade it for it's value", but even they, with their clout, cannot ever do it with a copy.

Aside from the letter of the law, if a judge were to bother to examine the principle (doubtful, unless there are at least millions on both sides), I suspect the argument would be that the proposed activity could easily be interpreted as distribution that replaced ("denied") sales to those holding the copyright, thus "denying" them income.

And, of course, there are few higher crimes in this society than denying a huge corporation income... especially as business models themselves increasingly become laws.

Of course, distributing the orignal has exactly the same effect... but they're working on that too- as evidenced by the legal attacks on used-CD stores, for instance- but in the end they'll probably settle for "improving" the media formats every so often (15 years, accelerating) so you have to re-buy your entire entertainment collection (movies, music, games) over and over again instead. Getting everyone to move from vinyl records to CD and from VHS to DVD was hugely profitiable, expect MUCH more of the same, with less benefit to the consumer, and more "digital rights management" (consumer-rights removal) for each round.

Personally, I don't care even a little bit how whether you distribute the orignal or a copy- I just wouldn't make plans to do so publicly.

That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard. And so true.

I didn't think I was going to need to do that for my VHS tapes. DVD didn't seem to be much better than VHS, although they are more likely to be widescreen. But then I got a wide-screen HDTV. VHS doesn't look any worse, but DVD looks so much better, I can't stand to watch a VHS. So now I'm replacing my favorite movies, gradually. I don't think I've even finished replacing all my favorite vinyl records with CD!

Well, I don't know how big Lion's Gate Entertainment is, but they're not exactly MGM. Making a movie is not cheap; filming it in the Canadian Arctic probably tripled the price. Choosing an unknown teenage Eskimo girl with no previous acting experience, who spoke English as a second language, to play the female lead may have been a brilliant stroke of artistic genius but it probably cut the potential audience in half. Setting it in Canada instead of Alaska ensured that it would never see mainstream distribution in the USA. And they probably lost a lot of the teenage male audience by not having the female lead prance around in the nude.

So I don't particularly begrudge them the $30 I paid for the DVD. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Sounds great. do it

Brian:

I mailed the DVD this afternoon. I put it in a regular CD case, not the DVD case it came in, so I could send it by regular letter mail - that way, I hope, you won't have to pay duty on it.