Matt Tauber writes…
It's interesting that in a city known for its high crime rate, this is what they've got the police working on. I wonder who was behind the initiative to arrest the video pirates.
The problem is, where does it stop? A friend of mine produces faux Aurora model kit boxes, often featuring characters who never had a kit. He was quizzed last year by Paul Levitz about them and told he was violating DC's copyright. He didn't say anything to the dealer next to my friend, who was selling drawings of DC characters and stained-glass replicas of DC character logos, for which DC receives nothing. I guess I'm asking if you want to stop the DVD bootleggers, do you also stop everyone else, even artists doing sketches? Convention operators always seem to get a pass when this debate comes up. Do you think this is something they should be policing, since they're benefiting from these dealers of unauthorized material?
To the first point: My guess would be that this was not a matter of the Detroit Police suddenly deciding they had nothing better to do than to go out and bust people selling unauthorized DVDs. My guess is that the M.P.A.A. (the producers' association) has put pressure on law enforcement agencies around the nation, starting with the FBI, and that senior agencies have passed the buck to lower agencies. And now that I think of it, the officers were probably less interested in the kind of bootleg I was describing — people selling shows they recorded off TV — than they were in pirated copies of current releases. No one pressures the law to take action against people pirating old episodes of Tennessee Tuxedo, though that may be an ancillary concern.
Of course, it's more important for the police to be arresting violent criminals but I don't think this is an either/or choice. It's also more important for them to be tracking down murderers than to be ticketing people who run stop signs but they have to occasionally ticket someone who runs a stop sign or else everyone would run stop signs.
Anyone who's in charge of protecting a copyright has a not-dissimilar problem deciding when to take action. There are egregious violations for which you have to summon the gendarmes (or pay legal fees) and those you decide not to pursue, either because they seem so trivial or because you're not sure some judge won't think they fall under the heading of "fair use." With the exception of a few known instances involving Disney, I've never heard of a copyright holder objecting to an artist selling a sketch or two. So my answer to the question "if you want to stop the DVD bootleggers, do you also stop everyone else, even artists doing sketches?" is "No, DC knows about it and they have the wherewithal to take action if they so elect. So if they're not bothered by people selling Superman sketches then I'm not going to let it bother me."
There are violations that even the violators would not argue were wrong and there are uses of others' copyrighted material that are considered acceptable. In between, there's an area that's extremely gray and arguable, and which often must be argued on a case-by-case basis. Its parameters get loosely defined by how proprietors object or give tacit approval…but selling a DVD of someone else's copyrighted material reproduced in full is well into the "violation" standard.
One other thing I should point out: When someone has a property and they sell licenses to other companies to exploit that property, they enter into business arrangements that are usually based on exclusivity. For example, if you go to Disney and pay them for the right to make Mickey Mouse cuspidors, the standard contract will stipulate (a) that Disney grants you the exclusive rights to make 'em, (b) that Disney has the legal right to grant you that exclusive license and (c) that Disney will defend your exclusive right. If I then go out and start bootlegging Mickey cuspidors and Disney doesn't stop me, they're in breach of their contract with you. Which is why they'd probably be more aggressive in stopping the counterfeit spittoons than they might be over some other infractions. I take a pretty liberal view of what constitutes "fair use" but I also recognize that some uses of others' property are not fair and need to be stopped.