digital use plus technical question

[Michael McCaskey]

Dear Stephanie DeBoer,

I have contemplated something similar, and my understanding from my univ. authorities is that as long as the web site remains within the univ. network and students inside the univ. with protected passwords use it only for educational purposes, it's okay to use images, etc., from elsewhere. I always put the URL of the web site borrowed from, plus now (since I learned about it), the .jpg or whatever URL for the specific image--which you can get by going to the Properties category for that image. For images from DVD's, scanned images, etc., you cd. put the copyright mark, c with circle around it, plus the copyright year and owner's name. All this makes it clear you are trying to play by the rules.

But if you open the web site to people outside your own univ. students, faculty and staff, then there cd. be a lot more trouble with copyright. The US Congress has extended copyright, especially for films, etc., for so many years that the amount of public domain stuff does not grow. I think that anything before 1923 is public domain automatically.

I don't know if I have answered your question satisfactorily, and I rely on others on this list to make corrections or additions.

TECHNICAL QUESTION

My own question, resulting from yours, is how to do these things technically. I would like to take short clips from films on DVD, and put the material on a single DVD to use in class, or make available via a closed univ. web site. Some of the DVD's I use are US format, Region 1, but most are Japanese format, Region 2. Some are European Region 2 PAL DVD's that have Japanese films with English subtitles not available in US format.

Right now, I have to change each DVD, and locate the position on the new DVD, to show another illustrative clip. If I cd. put all the clips for a class on one DVD, things wd. work much better. I'm pretty sure this can be done, because at a conference I was at last year a prof. had a home-made DVD with clips of several different Chinese films--some distributed in the US, and others available only in China, HK, Taiwan. She told me she did this with Apple iMovie, but I couldn't get her to reveal any more, and my own exploration of iMovie hasnot yielded the technical info needed.

I know there is so-called "ripping" software to extract DVD material and copy it to another DVD, but I don't know which kind is any good, or if such software can extract clips from multiple regions, namely Regions 1 and 2, in NTSC and sometimes PAL, which will all be showable on one DVD.

I don't know whether PC or MAC is better for this purpose either.

There used to be a JTLT or the like list re such technical matters regarding Japanese software, computer technology, etc., but either it has become defunct, or changed its name or URL. 

All I can find now are sites selling specific stuff that might be useful--they all say their own products are great, but I have no way of knowing.

Can anyone direct me to a list, web site, book, magazine, or whatever, that might help?

Many thanks,

Michael McCaskey
Georgetown Univ.

----- Original Message -----
From: stephanie deboer <sdeboer at usc.edu>
Date: Sunday, August 7, 2005 6:38 am
Subject: question about digital use

> Greetings everyone:
> 
> I seem to recall that my following question was a topic for the 
> list not too long 
> ago, but I'm afraid I can't find the emails that discussed this.  
> Feel free to 
> respond to me on or off list, and I'd be happy to compile any 
> responses I get and 
> post them back to everyone.
> 
> Could anyone point me toward sources (English/Japanese, 
> online/offline) that 
> would help me to navigate the use of Japanese moving images (by 
> which I 
> mean frames, stills or short film clips) on a project or site 
> linked to the internet?  
> I'm involved in creating a multimedia project - part archive, part 
> academic/artistic argument - that will eventually be linked to the 
> web, into which I'm 
> hoping to incorporate Japanese images (especially film images).  
> I’m a novice 
> in terms of their use in the public/digital sphere (not as 
> promotion, but as 
> academic, artistic or even archival "quote" in a digital context). 
> And would 
> appreciate any advice or thoughts as to what’s important either 
> practically 
> (procedures/advice regarding how to go about procuring rights) or 
> conceptually 
> (what's at stake here for the artist, academic, or archivist).  
> 
> My recollection is that this terrain is pretty murky, but any 
> thoughts or advice the 
> list might have would be most appreciated!   Or did anyone keep 
> records of the 
> discussion thread the list had about this not too long ago?
> 
> [And just to give you a sense of where I am in the process, I'm at 
> the beginning 
> stages of trying to secure usage rights for a couple of films 
> produced by Toho in 
> the early '60s.  If anyone has any advice specific to this, I'm 
> 'all ears' as well.]
> 
> Many thanks.
> 
> Stephanie DeBoer
> 
>