Monday 23 April 2007

Copyright on one-run preaching DVDs.

I bought DVDs from a conference in Adelaide where they were careful to point out that (a) these DVDs will never be produced again and (b) orders will only be accepted at the conference itself. Fair enough, because I wouldn't want to keep going back and producing more on my own, so I don't think they would either. The problem is this: they have a copyright notice at the start that forbids all copying. So, technically, if I want to share these non-profit Christian messages with other people, I'm breaking the law. I can't copy them even for people who couldn't afford to go to the conference or didn't know about it.

Why copyright? It was probably just a choice based on the fact that DVDs have copyright notices elsewhere, so these DVDs need them too. It wasn't motivated by protecting profit or recovering costs because there was no profit and the costs were all covered already by conference fees (for the cameras and editing) and the DVD order price (for blank discs and burning effort). The message should be allowed out as freely as possible. Putting the copyright notice on there was a tad short-sighted in my opinion.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might have been put there by external editors.
PPS - And it might just have been part of standard procedure at that company.

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