Hard-to-find Films, Copyright Law, and Youtube

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I will come out up front and say that, while I am not against copyright law, I think certain aspects of copyright law are irrational and unjust - existing for the greed of a few people rather than the artists or the public good. What I’m curious about is whether there are certain situations where it is morally OK to watch copyrighted material on Youtube.

I think most Catholics would agree that watching a recent and readily available movie that is under copyright on Youtube or another internet site is wrong, but how about the following situations. Let us assume for each situation that the person wanting to view the film is unable to watch VHS, either because they don’t have a VHS player or because they can’t find the film on VHS.
  1. A movie that was on VHS is still under copyright, but has never been released on DVD. In other words, the company that owns the rights refuses to release it and is not making any money off of it. The only way to watch the film is on Youtube, where someone has recorded it off of their old VHS tape. This is the case with a number of old, even classic films, and many foreign films.
  2. An obscure foreign film, which may or may not be recent but is still under copyright, is totally unavailable in the U.S. Someone in another country has uploaded it to Youtube, and this is the only way to watch it in the U.S. (or whatever country one lives in).
  3. A classic film is still under copyright despite having been made almost a century ago (so all the artists who participated in its making are dead and will not benefit from sales). This movie is available on DVD in the U.S., however, it is very expensive and the local library and video rental stores don’t have it. Since the person cannot afford to buy the movie, their choice is between watching it on Youtube, or not watching it at all. An example of this scenario is the movie “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” which was made in 1928 and was actually in the public domain in the U.S. for some time before coming under copyright again. It is available from Amazon for $32.50. Assume that the person cannot afford it and that it is otherwise unavailable to them.
Please provide arguments to support your view, and if possible, reference to theological texts on law or other Catholic sources. Thank you. 🙂
 
All three are the exact same situation. A movie that someone wants to see shouldn’t be on youtube, but they really want to see it and can’t watch it any other way. Wanting to see it and this being the only way to see it is irrelevant.

Is it illegal to watch something that you know to be copyrighted? Should we be doing something we know to be illegal?

The third one sort of implies that it might be OK, since they cannot afford it. A movie is not an essential need, so it does not apply here that someone could steal without being a sin.
 
I know that all three violate copyright law. My question is about the validity of the law.
 
bmullins said:
Wanting to see it and this being the only way to see it is irrelevant.
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Wanting to see it is morally irrelevant but is relevant since it is a necessary premise for the situation. This being the only way to see it is relevant because the purpose of copyright law is so that certain people will profit from the work, but at least in the first case, and arguably in the second, the people who would profit are not doing anything to gain that profit. Therefore, what is the point of the law?

The significance of the third example has less to do with the price (again, that’s merely a matter of making a scenario in which the moral issue can be raised) and more to do with the fact that the movie is so old that it was actually in the public domain at one point, but by a quirk of law it ended up under copyright again. Does it matter if the law is rational or irrational?

Maybe it really is as simple as “it’s the law, it’s not hurting anyone, so just shut up,” as you two are suggesting. But, I am curious about what the Catholic Church has to say regarding the legitimacy of laws that serve no apparent purpose and do not make sense in a given situation, but don’t really harm anyone either. If you know what the Church says about this, please provide a source. Thank you.
 
I disagree with the premise that a person is not doing anything to make a profit. Making the movie in and of itself is what you are paying for, not the DVD or the stream that is coming down to your computer, but the work that goes on to make the movie.

The point of the law is to prevent people from stealing it and giving it away. While it’s not as tangible as building a home, there is quite a bit more money involved. Paying the actors, building the sets, refining the film, editing it, sound tracks, etc. All of which require pay checks and tangible assets. All of which are stolen in small percentages when someone watches a movie.

The answer is in 1ke’s answer. If it violates copyright law, then it’s illegal. If it’s illegal, then we shouldn’t be doing it. If we have a problem with it, we need to be trying to overturn the law. Copyright law in no way infringes on our religion, so we can’t oppose it just because?
 
bmullins said:
I disagree with the premise that a person is not doing anything to make a profit. Making the movie in and of itself is what you are paying for, not the DVD or the stream that is coming down to your computer, but the work that goes on to make the movie.

The point of the law is to prevent people from stealing it and giving it away. While it’s not as tangible as building a home, there is quite a bit more money involved. Paying the actors, building the sets, refining the film, editing it, sound tracks, etc. All of which require pay checks and tangible assets. All of which are stolen in small percentages when someone watches a movie.
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I’m talking about old movies where the people who made them are dead and the company that owns the rights HAS NOT RELEASED THE FILM. How are they supposed to make a profit from a film they have not released?
 
Student09 said:
I’m talking about old movies where the people who made them are dead and the company that owns the rights HAS NOT RELEASED THE FILM. How are they supposed to make a profit from a film they have not released?
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What about their children? Their grand children? etc. If it’s still under copyright someone owns that copyright.
 
bmullins said:
What about their children? Their grand children? etc. If it’s still under copyright someone owns that copyright.
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In the case of films, this is usually a corporation that bought the rights and may or may not have had any involvement in the making of the film. With books, it is different.

Does it matter that the company is sitting on the rights and doing nothing with them?
 
OK … let me see if I can put this in a way that will get someone to take the question more seriously.
  1. Is copyright law, in the situations given, for the common good? (One could, obviously, get into an extensive discussion of the effect of current copyright law on the economy, etc. I am not competent to do that.)
  2. If not, does that effect the legitimacy of the law (since being for the common good is one of Aquinas’ conditions for legitimate human law)? Or does a law have to actually do harm in an obvious way, like killing people, in order to lose legitimacy?
Again … sources would be great.

(I can see now that I should have titled this thread something that put emphasis on the aspect of legality and legitimacy rather than giving the impression that it was a “but I reeeeaally want to watch movies on Youtube!” thread. Which was not my intention.)
 
Student09 said:
I’m talking about old movies where the people who made them are dead and the company that owns the rights HAS NOT RELEASED THE FILM. How are they supposed to make a profit from a film they have not released?
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By licensing the film to cable, that’s how - Turner Classic Movies, e.g., owns the copyright to an exorbitant number of films. There are very few (if any) “old” movies whose copyright permanently lapsed and therefore the internet’s flooded with PD (public domain) titles. That’s a myth. The only films that fit your criteria are the truly obscure, like Jerry Lewis’ unreleased “The Day The Clown Cried.” Joan of Arc? You’d be surprise how many people stake a claim to that silent film.
 
Student09 said:
In the case of films, this is usually a corporation that bought the rights and may or may not have had any involvement in the making of the film. With books, it is different.

Does it matter that the company is sitting on the rights and doing nothing with them?
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No. It doesn’t matter. For every movie you see, if you sit through the end credits, you’ll see a lawyer or law firm listed - each firm name or/and lawyer name representing numerous people securing the legal rights to a film’s content and (the issue at hand) distribution. The movies you never heard of or will never get to see? That’s right. It’s too bad “old” movies don’t list the full end credits - that practice didn’t really become common until the late 1970’s - because it leads to the impression that “nobody” owns these films. The guy who wrote “Meet Me In St. Louis” didn’t even get credit for it until a couple years ago.
 
Student09 said:
I’m talking about old movies where the people who made them are dead and the company that owns the rights HAS NOT RELEASED THE FILM. How are they supposed to make a profit from a film they have not released?
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they can hold the rights for future revenue. They may not want to release the film until they have a good reason to do so. It costs to make the DVDs and they may still have to pay royalties to the heirs. Generally creative rights pass to at least 1 if not 2 generations of the artist’s families.
 
OK … I get it. No one wants to answer my real question. Guess I would have had better luck with a question about homosexuality or the status of Santa Claus. 🤷
 
vsedriver said:
Generally creative rights pass to at least 1 if not 2 generations of the artist’s families.
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BTW, I think this is irrational and counterproductive. And if you read about the ethics of copyright law, you will find plenty of people, including copyright lawyers and writers and other creative people, arguing that current copyright laws with their seemingly endless term extensions beyond the author’s/artist’s lifetime actually inhibit the production of new creative works and have an adverse effect on the economy. It can also be argued that it is unconstitutional. But I will let you read up on that on your own time.

A law must be for the common good in order to be legitimate, says St. Thomas Aquinas. It must also be rational. In its current form, copyright law is neither. Now, whether this justifies breaking it, is something that I do not know.
 
I for one and in the “how can anybody possibly follow copyright law” crowd. not because I steal but because these laws are so obscure that nobody can really know what is and is not copyrighted. you watch you tube okay some of that stuff is perfectly legit. no reason not to watch, but some must be infringing copyright somewhere. It is really easy to see in the case of someone’s home movie, and the dark knight (batman) but what about the thousands of things on youtube that are simply to close to call. what about alluc.org is there stuff legit. they seem to keep on top of it pretty well, but I still see many things get removed for copyright infringement. Why is that? probably because even major corporations like you tube and alluc cannot keep it straight. Don’t even get me started about MP3’s. I will laugh when someone tells me they own every CD they have on there hard drive. that is so not even the point. just a few years ago (no I’m older than that it might have been 10) you would copy the whole tap for a friend and no one ever said a word about copyright infringement. Are these new laws then or was it illegal then as well.

I ramble a bit but the point is it is very difficult to know (even if you paid for it all) if you have not violated copyright infringement. we are not talking about someone who does not care about theft we are talking about laws so obscure you can’t really ever say weather you violated the law or not. I stopped worrying about it about the time they tried to tell people that you are not allowed to move a song you paid for and have a CD of from that CD to another computer you actually own then to your Ipod. It is just getting silly now.
This is just my 2 cents but these laws (the majority) serve no useful provision. You can’t really stop the net. These corporations are just going to have to find a new way to do business. Lets face it these laws were designed by big business to protect record labels of the 80’s not the artists of today. They certainly do not help society being as vague and cumbersome as they are.
 
jerome_vincent said:
I ramble a bit but the point is it is very difficult to know (even if you paid for it all) if you have not violated copyright infringement. we are not talking about someone who does not care about theft we are talking about laws so obscure you can’t really ever say weather you violated the law or not. I stopped worrying about it about the time they tried to tell people that you are not allowed to move a song you paid for and have a CD of from that CD to another computer you actually own then to your Ipod. It is just getting silly now.
This is just my 2 cents but these laws (the majority) serve no useful provision. You can’t really stop the net. These corporations are just going to have to find a new way to do business. Lets face it these laws were designed by big business to protect record labels of the 80’s not the artists of today. They certainly do not help society being as vague and cumbersome as they are.
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Agreed. And a law must be comprehensible and capable of being followed in order to be binding on conscience.
 
Student09 said:
I will come out up front and say that, while I am not against copyright law, I think certain aspects of copyright law are irrational and unjust - existing for the greed of a few people rather than the artists or the public good. What I’m curious about is whether there are certain situations where it is morally OK to watch copyrighted material on Youtube.

I think most Catholics would agree that watching a recent and readily available movie that is under copyright on Youtube or another internet site is wrong, but how about the following situations. Let us assume for each situation that the person wanting to view the film is unable to watch VHS, either because they don’t have a VHS player or because they can’t find the film on VHS.
  1. A movie that was on VHS is still under copyright, but has never been released on DVD. In other words, the company that owns the rights refuses to release it and is not making any money off of it. The only way to watch the film is on Youtube, where someone has recorded it off of their old VHS tape. This is the case with a number of old, even classic films, and many foreign films.
  2. An obscure foreign film, which may or may not be recent but is still under copyright, is totally unavailable in the U.S. Someone in another country has uploaded it to Youtube, and this is the only way to watch it in the U.S. (or whatever country one lives in).
  3. A classic film is still under copyright despite having been made almost a century ago (so all the artists who participated in its making are dead and will not benefit from sales). This movie is available on DVD in the U.S., however, it is very expensive and the local library and video rental stores don’t have it. Since the person cannot afford to buy the movie, their choice is between watching it on Youtube, or not watching it at all. An example of this scenario is the movie “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” which was made in 1928 and was actually in the public domain in the U.S. for some time before coming under copyright again. It is available from Amazon for $32.50. Assume that the person cannot afford it and that it is otherwise unavailable to them.
Please provide arguments to support your view, and if possible, reference to theological texts on law or other Catholic sources. Thank you. 🙂
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I don’t see any part of copyright law that is irrational or unjust.
  1. Movie studios own the rights to films paid for by them whether here or abroad. Say one studio has a library of two or three hundred films. The studio is a business and it seeks to make a profit. If they decide not to put an old movie on DVD it’s because they believe they will make very little profit from doing so, and instead put their money into releasing old movies on DVD that they know will make a profit - the more the better. It’s their property and their decision.
  2. What is being lost or who is being harmed when an obscure or foreign film is not available in the US?
  3. Those who are involved in any aspect of making a film are usually paid for their work and that’s it. They usually make no additional money if the movie is shown on TV or released on VHS or DVD unless it’s in their contract.
Who is harmed if someone cannot afford to buy a particular movie?

The greed argument makes little sense. Even today, movie studios have no formula that any particular movie will make its money back or make more than its budget. Say a movie is made for 100 million dollars and several additional millions of dollars were paid for advertising, including TV, billboards, signs on buses, etc. but it brings in only half of what it cost to make? But another movie is made for the same amount of money and it brings in 250 million dollars.

Were the people paying for making the movie greedy because the public paid them more money to see the higher grossing movie? How about baseball or football, are the team owners greedy? Why do some players get multi-million dollar contracts? Again, the public who choose to buy tickets to the games, and related merchandise, are involved dollar wise.

I can think of no instance where watching a copyright movie on youtube is permissable unless the studio that owns the film is the confirmed owner/downloader on youtube. The owner of a copyright work gets to decide how it’s distributed, not youtube or anyone posting on youtube. Copyright means right to copy. If a person does not have the right to copy then he should not copy it.

Take George Lucas who went everywhere to try to sell Star Wars. Fox was interested, he made a deal with them, cut in no-name actors for a bit of the profits and the rest is history. Nobody was forced to watch his movie.

If I made a movie, it’s my property. I can renew the copyright, I could sell the rights to someone else or give the rights to one of my children in my will.

How does putting a movie in the public domain help anybody? I work for a media company. We create original fiction. We do not care about something being public domain or not.

A few words from the FBI:

fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/cyber/ipr/ipr

A few words from the United States Department of Justice:

blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/1315

And the Entertainment Software Association:

theesa.com/policy/antipiracy.asp

Peace,
Ed
 
Student09 said:
I will come out up front and say that, while I am not against copyright law, I think certain aspects of copyright law are irrational and unjust - existing for the greed of a few people rather than the artists or the public good. What I’m curious about is whether there are certain situations where it is morally OK to watch copyrighted material on Youtube.
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For one thing, unless you’re using one of the many YouTube video downloaders to actually save the video to your hard drive or flash drive for off-line watching, you’re streaming, not downloading. There’s a difference. By downloading, you’re actually making a new copy - by streaming, you’re watching somebody else’s. One could argue that YouTube actually downloads a video to your hard drive for as long as you have the video window open, but according to one legal expert cited in an article I cannot find, this is still streaming. Streaming has been compared to broadcasting; if your local TV station airs something that infringes somebody else’s copyright, the TV station, not the viewers, will be held responsible.

It is commonly held by moral theologians that copyright laws DO bind in some way in conscience, although whether they do absolutely is doubtful. I quote from Fr. Heribert Jone’s “Moral Theology”, which is to my knowledge the last big pre-VII moral theology manual, used for training priests:

“The copyright laws oblige in conscience at least in so far as they protect the author from loss”.

I quoted from the 1963 edition, which appears to be the last; obviously, YouTube or the internet as it is today was completely unimaginable at the time. Whether your situations cause loss to the author is up to you to decide.

I can tell you this though: not all copyrighted content on YouTube is infringing. Since 2006, many content publishers (recording companies, TV producers, etc.) have elected to use YouTube to promote their videos. This is especially true of newer music videos - it’s hard not to find a music video made within the past 5 years posted on YouTube by the publisher. Al Jazeera and Russia Today have thousands of legal clips on YouTube, as it seems to be their main distribution medium. Some TV channels have placed free shows, often with advertising, on YouTube; and so on. It can sometimes be difficult to tell whether the uploader has the rights to the video.

The real clencher is that studios and labels are not defenseless (like they are with BitTorrents or P2P music sharing services). Content owners can “flag” a video as a copyright violation, and YouTube will take it down. Also, as a final solution, they can provide a copy of the piece of content (movie, song, video, etc.) they want to protect to YouTube, which will then be checked against future uploads. If somebody tries to upload a song or a movie which coincides with a “prohibited” song or movie, they will then be unable to do so (or, in the case of a song, the audio track will be disabled). Granted, there are ways around the video embargo, but this has been effective in not allowing people to upload, say, 2011 movies.

There are a lot of videos, which are probably infringing (on the part of the uploader), that have not been taken down despite having thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of views, accumulated over several years. If the legitimate authors of the content are not aware of this, they should be, yet they apparently “tolerate” it by neither flagging the offending content nor submitting a copy to YouTube to be checked against future uploads. Why? Sometimes, perhaps the author does not see it as causing him a loss, but rather as free promotion. YouTube videos, especially ones that infringe, are generally (but not always) of low quality. Their resolution is low and audio is monaural. Somebody uploading a movie from 1985 does not cost the studio anything (in terms of securing additional rights, paying somebody to upload it, paying for the bandwidth) yet could lead to at least a few new DVD purchases or NetFlix views (which are of higher quality and generate royalties for the author). Likewise, a low-quality copy of an episode of an fledgling cable TV show posted to YT could generate viewership of that show through official channels. Or perhaps they value their work so little that they see it as not worth defending.

This is definitely an interesting question that deserves a more intricate answer than “it’s STEALING and a MORTAL SIN!!!”
 
Caveat: what follows is an expression of my opinion, and I will state up front that I am not fully conversant with all the sub-paragraphs of the copyright law, or with the moral baggage that goes along with the concept of “intellectual property.”

I am very ambivalent on the subject of the copyright. On one hand, as a one-time song-writer and and wannabe novelist, I am interested in receiving royalties for my work. On the other hand, as one who is also interested in open access to information, I get grumpy when my access to that information is blocked by a screen that demands a credit card number before it will let me read copyrighted material.

I am in agreement with the opinion stated above that the copyright law is obtuse, convoluted, and otherwise difficult to understand, especially in a culture where certain things are readily available, but if I access them in certain ways, I could be guilty of a violation . . . or not.

If I were king (and aren’t we glad that I’m not!), a copyright could be owned only by a person (or group of persons), not by a corporation (that might be a problem in the case of a movie). The copyright would cease at the person’s death (or the death of the last person in the group), because it is enough that the person’s heirs inherit the wealth that the person accrued during his lifetime.

With regard to the possible violation of the law by someone who merely listens to a song on the internet or watches a clip on Youtube, I am reminded of one of the Joha stories that I read during my Arabic studies (Joha is sort of the Arab equivalent of Homer Simpson, without the taste for beer, and sometimes with a little more shrewd wit). In this story, Joha was actually the village judge. The village baker noticed that his neighbor was too obviously enjoying the aroma of his freshly baked bread, and he hailed him into court, demanding that the neighbor pay for the pleasure of smelling the bread. Joha listened to both sides, and then ordered the neighbor to produce his purse. He did so, and Joha tossed it up and caught it a few times, making the coins within jingle. Then he gave the purse back to the neighbor and told the baker, “Now you are even. He has smelled your bread, and you have listened to his money.”
 
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