{"id":445,"date":"2002-12-21T11:19:01","date_gmt":"2002-12-21T16:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/?p=445"},"modified":"2002-12-21T11:19:01","modified_gmt":"2002-12-21T16:19:01","slug":"creativity-control-and-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/2002\/12\/21\/creativity-control-and-revenue\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity, control and revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two stories in the Toronto Star<\/a> television supplement caught my eye this week. <\/p>\n

The first was about David Foley’s <\/a>upcoming Christmas Special. In it, he and Joe Flaherty <\/a>are doing a sendup of David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing Little Drummer Boy \/ Peace On Earth. Foley tells of having to rewrite both tunes and their lyrics when it was discovered they couldn’t get the rights to either song.<\/p>\n

I wondered how it was that the authors or their representatives decided that they didn’t want their songs used in this way. I wondered further whether having released their creativity to the world they should really have injunctive power over its use or whether they should only have a right to be compensated for its use.<\/p>\n

The second article was about It’s A Wonderful Life<\/a>. Apparently it was not well received on release, losing half a million in late-1940’s dollars. It languished for years until 1973 when, not having had its copyright renewed by its owners (Liberty Films<\/a>), it fell into the public domain after 14 years. At that time, TV stations started picking it up cheap to play at Christmastime and it became a perennial favourite. <\/p>\n

For 20 years it remained in the public domain, there were many $4.99 VHS copies available, and there was even a colourized version. Somehow, in the 90s, Republic Pictures managed to reclaim the copyright. They have taken control, and produced a new master black-and-white print, and now it only airs on NBC and CBC and is only available on video from them.<\/p>\n

How is it that this happened? Will it happen every time some obscure title becomes valuable after falling into the public domain that someone – not necessarily the creator – will find away to claim it for themselves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two stories in the Toronto Star television supplement caught my eye this week. The first was about David Foley’s upcoming Christmas Special. In it, he and Joe Flaherty are doing a sendup of David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing Little Drummer Boy \/ Peace On Earth. Foley tells of having to rewrite both tunes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}