Point Break – not coming to a cinema near you | Hacker News Reader

Point Break – not coming to a cinema near you

bfi.org.uk

21 pointsDanBC15 comments

I honestly had a hard time following this - who is this person and why are they "screening" Point Break? Is this for a paid cinema and they need to secure these rights, or is it a private thing and the person is being anal retentive about the legalities? Perhaps theres some context I'm missing here?

There's some background on where the piece came from here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comm...

But the specifics of the author's case don't really matter all that much. "Screening" means she wants to show it to the public, and since Point Break is a copyrighted work, that's not something you can do without the permission of the copyright holder (see http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/sightsandsounds/?id=11...).

The point of the article is that in many cases, finding someone who can actually give you that permission is insanely difficult or even impossible, as the rights for a property pass from company to company over years of deals and mergers and bankruptcies. It can get so complicated that eventually nobody knows who actually owns the rights anymore, turning the property into an "orphan work" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works). This results in a Catch-22: you can't exhibit the work without the permission of the rightsholder, but since nobody knows anymore who the rightsholder is, there's no practical way for you to get that permission. So the work floats in limbo, inaccessible to the public unless you're willing to break the law.

Is it breaking the law though if nobody comes forward to claim a violation?

Yes

But does it matter?

Yes, because when you break it you suddenly create a strong incentive for the original copyright holder to be found

"Is it illegal to kill a person if she has no family or friends?"

Poor comparison. It's illegal to deprive a living person of their future by murder. Showing a copyrighted work of which nobody claims the rights only deprives the copyright owner of their rights, and (assuming they even still exist) if they have failed to recognize the existence of their rights to the property then in my opinion no wrong was done. A movie's rights are not a living, feeling and breathing being that can be murdered.

I was giving an example of law-breaking that's still law-breaking even if nobody reports a violation. I don't know if it's specifically true for copyright infringement, but your question could have been construed more generally, and the fact that there are actions that are illegal even though nobody wants to report the violation shows that there is precedent.

Well that's a more nuanced philosophical discussion for which murder is a poor example. A better one would be something like stealing a candy bar from a grocery store. A found body, or a reported missing person, would yield a response from local law enforcement if the perpetrator could be linked in any way. An example of a stolen candy bar the grocer never noticed missing more directly targets the question of 'if I don't get caught, does it matter'?

Anyway, the question here isn't whether you get caught. The question is whether it's actually illegal if there is no copyright holder that anyone knows of, and one doesn't come forward with a legitimate claim. Will law enforcement charge you with a crime?

I'm not a lawyer and have no experience with law, but I do love free (and legally so) movies, so I'm genuinely curious about this.

A related question: What happens when IP maximalists succeed in changing this from civil law to criminal law?

Someone might be willing to risk damages -- all the more so if they were actually limited to direct demonstrable loss rather than absurd... "presumed / possible / theoretical knock-on" loss amounts. But criminal prosecution?

Along with IP rights should come responsibilities, especially with items that have become part of common culture and dialog. If you don't fairly represent those rights to the culture/society, you should lose them.

In the patent world, IIRC, you can't simply use a patent to take a technology "off the market" / out of use altogether. (I'm no lawyer, and maybe I'm wrong, but isn't there language in the legislation mandating licensure under various scenarios?)

Neither should that apply to published works.

> What happens when IP maximalists succeed in changing this from civil law to criminal law?

It already is criminal law, and has been for ages.

Copyright as way of trade - selling burnt DVDs, charging access to a torrent site, showing films without the correct permissions, etc - would all fit under the criminal bits of UK law. I'd be surprised if the US was any different.

The story it references was big in California. Run Tutor's company was involved in a scandal with the San Francisco Airport paying $19M to settle fraud charges. In 2013, his company was awarded an $840M contract for a SF subwary project. Tutor is worth hundreds of millions and is legitimate I think.

However Tutor's partner, David Bergstein, wasn't and he destroyed Capitol Films, ThinkFilm and Intermedia -- which was huge. I can't remember how large Intermedia's library is but I believe it is rather massive with various subsidies, however, Bergstein-Tutor only bought part of Intermedia's libraries and provided a $150M line of credit to them.

I have to wonder if this is just hype for the upcoming remake:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058673/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Certainly not. Anybody who wants to show Point Break, the original, on the big screen for a small event will not like even the idea of a remake without Kathryn Bigelow involved. Watch the real thing.

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