You may have heard in the news yesterday that two people have been arrested in the UK for pirating the Stallone-Statham-Schwarzenegger actioner The Expendables 3. Turns out that what wasn’t expendable was the $10m revenue the film apparently lost out on thanks to online pirates – at least, that’s the view of the movie’s producer.
With the issue of copyright rearing its head in the headlines again, it’s worth bearing a few things in mind. You may not realise it, but Great Britain actually has an entire police department, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), dedicated to hunting down those who flout anti-piracy laws.
Here at Cine 2 DVD Transfers, we specialise in converting your old films and videos onto the DVD disc format. But that sort of service is reserved for those products for which you actually own the copyright. So how do you know if you own the copyright on your intellectual property?
Here in the UK, copyright is granted if you’ve created the work – be that a recording of your sister’s wedding, or an original poem you wrote for your mum’s birthday. That blog you run on the side, you own the IP for that. And you don’t have to do anything in order to copyright anything you’ve created, it automatically comes into effect the moment you’ve made it. Generally speaking, copyrights last life plus 50 years too. That’s why you’ll sometimes see movies and books in the public domain – the copyright expired and no-one renewed it.
But pretty obviously we don’t own the copyright to The Expendables 3 – even if we have the DVD at home. In fact, these days, in the age of digital ownership, you rarely even own items you’ve purchased, at least not in the legal sense. So you don’t own that song you bought on iTunes – you’ve bought a licence to play it; a licence which can be withdrawn at any notice. Same with film and game downloads.
If you’re looking to transfer your old home movies, whether it’s birthdays, christenings, weddings, Christmas get-togethers or that old film you made back in school – because you own the copyright to them – we can help. Here at Cine 2 DVD Transfers we’re always on-call to convert your cine films to DVD for you to watch and share once more. For more information about our services, please contact us on 0800 592 433 or email us at info@cine2dvdtransfers.co.uk and we’ll be glad to assist.
