I’ve never really fully appreciated how stupid most of today’s copyright laws are, and how frustrating and debilitating they can be to a filmmaker, specifically a documentary filmmaker, until I started on my own project. I understand not wanting someone else to profit from your work… but for goodness sake, when you have to pay thousands of dollars in licencing fees just because you hum 9 bars of a tune in your film is totally insane. Now these outdated and twisted laws are threatening films in a new way. The folks at Boing Boing give us this:
The Documentary Organization of Canada has released a new white paper detailing the many Canadian treasures that are lost due to the greed of rightsholders and the spike in copyright liability insurance.
The Copyright Clearance Culture and Canadian Documentaries, written by Ottawa copyright lawyer Howard Knopf, cites many eyebrow-raising cases. An example: Quebec filmmaker Sylvie Van Brabant’s film Remous/Earthwalk has been withdrawn from public circulation because its main character sings 30 seconds of a recognizable tune whose rights the National Film Board has deemed too expensive to renew.
Something has to be done about this. The very spirit of “fair use” is being undermined everyday, and now films, parts of our culture are being ruined and taken away become so many people want “their cut”. Some law makers need to grow some balls and change this… before it gets too out of control to have anything done at all.
