[Foundation-l] Donation of DVDs to Wikimedia Foundation Projects

[Ray Saintonge]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Imagine, for the sake of the discussion here, that you have a production 
>of a TV episode like Star Trek that is available under the GFDL. 
> Assuming that video is available under a GPL-like distribution license, 
>you would be free to take all of the fancy special effects and replace 
>all of the scenes with William Shatner in them with an actor who 
>actually knows what he is doing.  :)
>
Anybody with the initiative to sell his kidney stones on eBay must have 
a great sense of humour; this is supported by his incomparable rendition 
of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.".  Some others of us might be happy 
to get rid of the special effects and keep Shatner in a medium that 
requires more imagination from the user.

>Of you could "insert" additional scenes, or rearrange the order of the 
>content in a variety of ways to create something very new.  BTW, this 
>was a very popular technique for Russian filmakers during the early part 
>of the 20th Century, where they would get hours of "stock footage" and 
>with just some simple movie editing tools would "compile" new motion 
>pictures.  This has also been a fairly common technique for some serial 
>television programs, such as the television series [[JAG]] in some of 
>its early seasons of production.
>
We still need to respect the originator's moral rights in the sense of 
recognizing what he did and what came from him, but the approach you 
describe seems more consistent with Jefferson's vision of intellectual 
property than a geriatric mouse that will soon have lived longer than 
Jefferson himself.

Ec