Intro and Q about RiffTrax legal issues

[Cut2Riff]

Permit me to introduce myself: I'm Marty, just a typical Midwest (Grand Rapids, Michigan) guy who's a stereotypical MST3K & RiffTrax fan like you'se all (as my somewhat less articulate relatives in Chicago might say...)

... well, maybe not all that typical, as I'm one of those, dontcha know (I lived for a decade or so in San Diego's Hillcrest, if you want a hint... and I'm extremely jealous that Mike and Brigit now live in San Diego without me!)

Anyway, there's no question that Mike & the gang's innovative solution to poking fun at mainstream movies is perfectly legal, with no copyright issues involved.  And I'm not so blankly clueless as to not know why the guys can't sell just already RiffTrax-synched DVDs of these mainstream movies.

But aren't there other options they can sell that would also be fully legal, considering Fair Use and the First Amendment in general?

I dunno, maybe we need to hear from a First Amendment attorney, but does anyone have any ideas -- even if they seem far-fetched?

I looked for a previous discussion on this issue, but all I could find is DisembAudio's FAQ answer, which isn't very complete (as one would expect of a FAQ), so I'm looking forward to a lively discussion!


Your new neighbor,

- Marty

[Minnesota]

Welcome Marty, Have you seen the blog lately? Its overrun with political ads (given the rifftrax treatment ). As far as 'riffing' on pop culture as a whole... you might wanna check out the TV show 'The Soup'. It's got a slightly different take than Rifftrax when making fun of celebrities.

[Cut2Riff]

Thanks for the welcoming glad hand, Mayor!  Down here in Michigan, we had the first day of Spring yesterday, and it was supremely wonderful.  How I love the Midwest in the spring!  I'll bet the sun's even started coming up up in de frozen Nort, eh?  (I went to college in the U.P., so I feel I've earned the right to talk like a Uper...)

Thanks for the info.

Yer pal and reverent subject of Nilbog,

- Marty

Welcome Marty, Have you seen the blog lately? Its overrun with political ads (given the rifftrax treatment ). As far as 'riffing' on pop culture as a whole... you might wanna check out the TV show 'The Soup'. It's got a slightly different take than Rifftrax when making fun of celebrities.

[bettertomorrowamy]

Welcome fellow traveler!  Enjoy!

[RoninFox]

Welcome to the forums.  Every now and then you'll find a proposed method of Rifftrax distribution on the forum, but they're usually just not as practical as the system in place.  Selling DVDs of anything but the public domain movies would require licensing the movies, thus making Rifftrax more expensive than it has to be, plus there's always the possibility of the licensing just being denied.  Making CDs of the commentary aren't really possible as the Rifftrax would almost always be too long for them and would also mean more production costs.  What they're giving us now so far seems to be the best answer, but who knows what they'll come up with for the future.

[Cut2Riff]

Thanks, G-[wo]man!  (kiddin'...)

That's pretty much the answer I had and had expected, but I can't help wondering: To the best of my knowledge, there are still several Christian movie services that buys a fresh, royalty-paid mainstream movie -- without paying any rights at all -- and then produce another DVD that they've edited to remove what they consider to be offense language, violence, and sexuality. They were sued by the film industry, but they triumphed in court .... [Oops! Wrong-O, Daddy-O!  See my later correction in my reply to RoninFox. But they were NOT taking the careful legal steps to avoid angering the copyright gods that MY plan demands!]

[ snip -- edited to remove another inadequately researched -- although tentatively delivered -- assertion.  As my old friend Traka said a few too many times, "Martin is a Ninny!"]

That is precisely what I've done for my own RiffTraxed movies: Bought (never rented!) the original, mainstream DVD, then bought and downloaded the RiffTrax audio, then synchronized them in a highly complex and time-consuming process onto my own output DVD, so now I can just slip in my pre-synched version into my DVD player without the slightest further hassle.

I've gotten so good at this -- the resulting synched DVD has all the menus, features, trailers, and specials that the original DVD had. -- that I was wondering if I mightn't legally offer those services to others. 

I have made a request to a respected First Amendment attorney and scholar to research the legalities of doing this, but this has not yet been done (and will cost be plenty!).  But his preliminary response was precisely the same as yours, so it doesn't look at all promising at the moment.  It's just that I can't understand how the Christian movie editors can do it and win every suit brought by the industry if the service I'd like to provide is actually illegal.  I very much doubt they keep winning based on some highly specious argument that to deny them this interferes with their rights to religious freedom.

Whaddya think?  Do you know anything about those Christian movie editors and why they've always won in court?



- Marty


p.s.: I spent quite a bit of time carefully documenting the previous process I used (tried to use, but MuxMan failed me) for free public consumption here:

Traxer19's RiffTrax™ DVD Generation Guide!

That is the simplest procedure I could come up with at the time (May, 2007), but when some friends and others viewed it, they were completely discouraged by the fairly ridiculous complexity involved and decided to forgo even trying!   That's why I figured others would appreciate my service, but obviously I'm not about to try to take on Hollywood!

- Marty

Welcome to the forums.  Every now and then you'll find a proposed method of Rifftrax distribution on the forum, but they're usually just not as practical as the system in place.  Selling DVDs of anything but the public domain movies would require licensing the movies, thus making Rifftrax more expensive than it has to be, plus there's always the possibility of the licensing just being denied.  Making CDs of the commentary aren't really possible as the Rifftrax would almost always be too long for them and would also mean more production costs.  What they're giving us now so far seems to be the best answer, but who knows what they'll come up with for the future.

[Cut2Riff]

Thanks, Amy!

I sure like the picture you have an awful lot more than my own!


- Marty

Welcome fellow traveler!  Enjoy!

[RoninFox]

Quite a few people around here reauthor their own dvds, which you can't really get in any legal trouble for if you do in fact buy and own the original dvd, in which case it's considered a backup copy for personal use.  It wouldn't be practical for Rifftrax to do this themselves though, as it would add to the cost.  Rifftrax would have to buy a large amount of the dvds, take the time to reauthor a new version, leading them to either hire someone new to do it or add to someone else's official workload, then ship both dvds to the consumer.  Plus they'd still have to keep the old way of distributing it up so that people who already own the dvd in question wouldn't have to repurchase it. 

As far as you providing the service for someone else, you'd end up with possible legal disputes from two directions.  If you don't sell the official unriffed version along with the Riffed DVD then you'd be catching it from the movie distributor, and there's also the fact that you'd be distributing the Rifftrax itself, which'd land you in trouble with Legend Films. 

Publishing your guide for everyone to see is fine though.  The one thing I haven't figured out how to do yet is menus so I'm curious what you're using to get them done.

[bettertomorrowamy]

I heard through the grapevine that Rifftrax was trying to get the rights to Terminator 3 so that they could offer a VOD of the T3 Rifftrax synced up with the movie.  Maybe if the movie industry realizes there is money in doing this we will see it.  Maybe even official studio releases with the rifftrax commentary as a menu option.

Those Christian groups who "Christianize" movies and resell them are Non-Profit I believe, so they can afford not to make money on their little business.
That's not the same for Rifftrax and Legend Films.

[Cut2Riff]

Thanks again, RoninFox, for the info.  Note that my question is first and foremost about whether I could offer this service legally, and I'd long ago decided that -- exactly as I said in my previous message -- I would always and  always and always buy both a fresh new movie DVD -and- a fresh new RiffTrax download for each and every --- each and every -- individual order.  And the end user would get all three products in their shipment: the new movie DVD and the RiffTrax (on a data cd, not as an audio CD) and the synchronized combination of the two.  Everyone should be happy because all royalties are paid in full to everyone.

As for my guide, note that IT DOES NOT WORK, because MuxMan does not work.  I never posted the link here or anywhere because of that fact.  I don't want anyone going through all that effort just to find that one of the most important steps cannot be performed!

- Marty

Quite a few people around here reauthor their own dvds, which you can't really get in any legal trouble for if you do in fact buy and own the original dvd, in which case it's considered a backup copy for personal use.  It wouldn't be practical for Rifftrax to do this themselves though, as it would add to the cost.  Rifftrax would have to buy a large amount of the dvds, take the time to reauthor a new version, leading them to either hire someone new to do it or add to someone else's official workload, then ship both dvds to the consumer.  Plus they'd still have to keep the old way of distributing it up so that people who already own the dvd in question wouldn't have to repurchase it. 

As far as you providing the service for someone else, you'd end up with possible legal disputes from two directions.  If you don't sell the official unriffed version along with the Riffed DVD then you'd be catching it from the movie distributor, and there's also the fact that you'd be distributing the Rifftrax itself, which'd land you in trouble with Legend Films. 

Publishing your guide for everyone to see is fine though.  The one thing I haven't figured out how to do yet is menus so I'm curious what you're using to get them done.

[Cut2Riff]

Well, I've just come back from a closer, up-to-date investigation of the "Christianization" producers, and it turns out they were ordered to cease operations in 2005.  Downer.

But nothing I've seen so far indicates that they were following the model I've put forth here, so there's still hope.  They were taking illegal shortcuts and -- completely unlike my plan -- tried to sell or offer for rent JUST the edited version alone!   You'd think they wouldn't have tried doing something so obviously illegal by so undeniably breaking so many copyright laws all at once, but perhaps their engineers would have trouble even with Estes rocket science....


So I'm gonna have to pay for the First Amendment scholar's research after all...  Yikes!

- Marty

[bettertomorrowamy]

What if....Rifftrax doesn't want you selling re-authored discs with their audio commentaries on them even if you pay for both the Rifftrax and the movie??

This is the kind of thing that would require Rifftrax to start putting DRM on their .mp3 files.  This would be mostly just to show that they are attempting to thwart people from selling re-authored movies with their commentary on them.  I would imagine that if it was legal to sell movies this way Legend Films would be looking into doing it themselves.  I don't think Legend Films/Rifftrax wants to be relegated to a middle man in this.

[RoninFox]

I don't question that you're looking for a legal and right way of doing this, it's very clear you're trying to do it in a way where everyone involved gets whats due to them, I just don't see how it would really work.  Heck I've even thought about doing something similar on a small scale, burning a disc of a Rifftrax and giving it as a gift to my brother along with the official dvd and making a donation to Rifftrax for the amount, just to help convince him that Rifftrax is worth a look.  Instead I settled on taking my reauthored Star Wars Holiday Special dvd with me on my most recent visit and watching it with him.

[Cut2Riff]

Well, Amy, I've already prepared both an email and a personal video request for permission to do this from RiffTrax.  I have no wish to do this without their consent, I promise you!

But I haven't sent these permission requests yet, since I'm still not 100% certain of the legalities.  But I think I will do so now, as soon as I learn RiffTrax's mailing address (anyone know it?)  For what it's worth, my brother (who was a popular DJ here in GR and now works in sales for the same station and is very familiar with copyright issues) and my best friend Tim Story (a remarkably gifted composer and musician who has sampled others' music a few times for inclusion in his recordings of Ambient Music and so is exceptionally well informed on copyright issues) have both advised me to strongly consider just going ahead (once I obtain Mike Nelson's / RiffTrax's formal or informal permission) with my plans while waiting for the fully researched legal opinion from the First Amendment attorney.  Their reasoning?  I'll either hear first from the attorney or I'll hear first from the industry if and when they send a "cease and desist" order, and there's no reason whatsoever to suspect there will be any other legal action or fines for the very low level of operations I'll be capable of prior to hearing from my attorney.

I'll even avoid the possible gotcha based on the digital millennium act concerning DRM issues by processing only those RiffTraxed movies without DRM.  (I don't see any possible notion that Mike & RiffTrax would feel compelled to add DRM to their RiffTraxes if I obtain some kind of permission from them to buy and download the RiffTraxes at full retail prices for each and every individual customer order, do you?)

And speaking of my friend Tim, he's already composed a great theme for my new company logo!  And he's eager to start composing a theme for the 30-second intro I'll be adding to each output DVD.  Tim's composed at least two full movie soundtracks already, so he's an expert at the process!

Changing topics, here's a tech question for you, Amy:  I uploaded a new animated gif for my photo, but it's not playing.  How did you get your animated gif to play?  Do I just need to place it into my sig, or can I do it with my photo?

Your pal,

- Marty

What if....Rifftrax doesn't want you selling re-authored discs with their audio commentaries on them even if you pay for both the Rifftrax and the movie??

This is the kind of thing that would require Rifftrax to start putting DRM on their .mp3 files.  This would be mostly just to show that they are attempting to thwart people from selling re-authored movies with their commentary on them.  I would imagine that if it was legal to sell movies this way Legend Films would be looking into doing it themselves.  I don't think Legend Films/Rifftrax wants to be relegated to a middle man in this.

[Cut2Riff]

Hello again, RoninFox, my thoughtful and careful friend,

Please see my most recent reply to bettertomorrowamy.  There are no technical or practical problems I can see at all in any of what I plan to do for right now.  The only issues that remain are the formal legal ones and the less formal question of obtaining RiffTrax's permission to proceed as I've outlined, and I can't really imagine Mike turning me down at least on a casual basis (i.e., I see no reason he or the RiffTrax organization would object to me buying and downloading a bunch of RiffTrax mp3s at full retail price for each and every order, do you?)  On the other hand, it's possible that Mike would be reluctant to give me any kind of formal, official permission lest he imagine it might come back to bite him in the AssTrax, so I wouldn't want him to provide such!  I couldn't live with myself if I somehow got all those great, friendly folks into the tiniest bit of hot water...


- Marty

I don't question that you're looking for a legal and right way of doing this, it's very clear you're trying to do it in a way where everyone involved gets whats due to them, I just don't see how it would really work.  Heck I've even thought about doing something similar on a small scale, burning a disc of a Rifftrax and giving it as a gift to my brother along with the official dvd and making a donation to Rifftrax for the amount, just to help convince him that Rifftrax is worth a look.  Instead I settled on taking my reauthored Star Wars Holiday Special dvd with me on my most recent visit and watching it with him.