Copyright and authors

[Aaron Gerow]

There is a lot confusing about this. What, for instance, is Kurosawa's  
estate getting out of this? Is this an admission by Toho that  
directors, not the studio, has copyright and will it pay all the  
directors covered by this precedent? What is an auteur (the  
interpretation was that under the old law works are only covered under  
the director's status if that director is a creative artist, not if he  
is not, in which case his death is irrelevant to copyright and it is  
the year of release that matters)? My sense is the Director's Guild of  
Japan is not too happy about these decisions.

The absurdity about all this is that the studios have been fighting to  
claim total copyright for a long time, and it was under that basis  
that the law was changed in 1971. So all works after that are works  
for hire and the death of the director is irrelevant for figuring term  
of copyright. It is just now that some profitable films are becoming  
public domain that the studios suddenly decide that the director has  
copyright (for films made before 1971), not the studio. But I bet they  
still insist on taking most of the money for something now technically  
under someone else's copyright. The hypocrisy is tremendous. But it  
seems that courts do not judge hypocrisy, only the letter of the law  
(especially when interpreted by big corporations). I just wonder what  
the old directors and their estates are doing about this.


Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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