Copyright and authors

[Roger Macy]

Thanks for the links, Shirley.
I would have thought that more than one international media organisation would have had this judgement translated.  I'll dig around.
As for the Ozu films, it can be reported simply.  It is, alas, hardly unusual, that there is no translation or subtitling credit on the prints of the first three films I have seen in the season at the BFI.  They were all NFC prints with english subtitles, but about the first bit of subtitling was to reserve copyright for the subtitled prints to Shochiku, from dates in the early 80s.
So the precise linkage in law (and whether the linkage is both ways) between creative work and authorship becomes interesting.
What I have not checked, and will try and do so, is if the cans or their documentation give any further details.  I mention this because, on the occasions I have asked before [note the wording] 'who did the translation', the answer has always been 'The subtitles were done by John Minchinton'.  In interview, John Minchinton has said that the documentation for all his work says 'Subtitles copyright John Minchinton and XXXX'  ['XXXX' being his particular language collaborator].  My interview with his Japanese language collaborator revealed that even she was unaware of this. I do not know how legally robust such an assertion is, but it would presumably hold good against those who knew of it., if it had a determined date.  John Minchinton, incidentally, has subtitled some two thousand films.

By the way, if anyone could supply me with a contact address for Donald Richie, off-list, beyond that we used for get-well cards from David Bordwell's blog, I would appreciate it.

Roger

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shirley Field" <field.shirley at gmail.com>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 5:09 AM
Subject: Re: Copyright and authors


> Roger - If you wouldn't mind elaborating, I would like more about the
> Ozu situation of which you speak.
> 
> Toho won their lawsuit in July. Though they didn't get nearly as much
> as they would have liked (Cosmo Coordinate was ordered to pay $78,127
> rather than the $1.3 million Toho asked for), the court did rule that
> the movies should be protected until 38 years after Kurosawa's death.
> All I can find right now in English is a Variety article on the case:
> http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006892.html?categoryid=19&cs=1&nid=2562.
> (I don't guess anyone knows why news sites like Mainichi and Yomimuri
> remove their news articles so quickly?)
> 
> You can read the court proceedings here:
> http://bizlaw.jp/hanketsu/2009/07/206849.html
> 
> All the best,
> Shirley Field
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Back in March 2008, Aaron was giving us an interesting account of Toho
>> asserting individual author's rights in an attempt to extend copyright on
>> the films of Kurosawa Akira, against the weight of the 1971 copyright laws
>> [''Kurosawa films and copyright suit'].
>> I'd be interested in any update on that, as well as whether anyone had an
>> opinion as to whether Toho's assertion, is legally compatible with
>> Shochiku's of renewed copyright on Ozu silent films as from the 80s, on
>> their english-subtitled prints, which do not mention the name of any
>> translator, subtitler or any other author of the new work.
>> Happy New Year,
>> Roger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20100107/9bfdf38d/attachment.html