Are lines ever edited out because of copyright? (1 Viewer)

[Elena S]

I know lines are sometimes lifted from DVD sets if they contain music, but have any lines ever been edited out of shows for other reasons? For instance, if a Walt Disney character's name is mentioned, would that have to be cleared?

 

[Yee-Ming]

Off the top of my head, unlikely. It's hard to claim copyright in just a line, or just a name. To follow from your example, if the name "Mickey Mouse" is mentioned, that's not likely to be copyright infringement since there's probably no copyright in the name itself, being too short to be considered an 'artistic expression of an idea'. "Mickey Mouse" is no doubt trademarked to death covering all sort of goods and services, but the use you've described (i.e. someone saying the name in another movie) would not be use in the trademark sense, i.e. used on goods, or in relation to services being provided.

That's not to say Disney (more accurately it's anal-retentive lawyers) won't kick up a fuss, though....

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I know of one instance: On Red Dwarf: Series 2 in the episode "Kryten", Rimmer utters the line "she has less meat on her than a Chicken McNugget." In order to avoid any potential complaint from McDonald's lawyers (though none was anticipated), BBC Worldwide decided to silence the "Mc" from the sountrack, so on the DVD, it sounds like Rimmer says "chicken nugget." The episode, by the way, was issued in its original unaltered form on VHS years ago.

 

[MatthewA]

On the Columbia House VHS tapes of Soap, one of the last episodes has Jessica and Mary talking about Cosmopolitan magazine, and the name of the magazine is in reverse audio.

 

[MattSav]

I can think of another one - in one of the earlier seasons of Absolutely Fabulous, Edina is in the kitchen late at night talking to (I think) Saffy.

She quoted a line from a Madonna song (I think it was "Like a Prayer") and it was cut from the DVD release (at least in Region 1).

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Product names are a whole different issue than "copyright" or trademark more broadly considered. There are several problems with using real product names on TV, whether as props, in signage or in dialogue.:

1) Companies like to control their image. Budweiser probably does not want its beer being guzzled by a stagggering, half-naked Charlie Harper on Three-and-a-Half Men.

2) Competitors don't like it when brand "A" is featured in the show their commercials for brand "B" is running on. That's why there is usually some "promotional consideration" involved in getting a real product on a show. Such placement is, in effect, an advertisement, so it actually levels the playing field if the company doing it pays a fee just like any other advertiser. And in some cases the deal includes only running ads for that brand during the commercial breaks. The old FBI series on ABC TV was sponsored, in part, by a car company. (Let's say it was Ford, although my memory isn't really that good. ) Everybody in the show drove Ford or Lincoln-Mecury products, and no GM or Chrysler ads ran duing the show.

3) Whatever the case may have been in first-run broadcast, odds are nobody's still collecting promotional fees by the time a show hits home video or syndication, and nobody knows what competitor to a given product might be running ads on a local channel or in a local cable market, so it is easier all around to remove such references as there are.


Song lyrics are no different than actual recordings when it comes to music rights. In fact, it is often whoever holds the publishing rights, not the recording artist or record label, who is the biggest stumbling block to music clearances. And composers and lyricists have equal rights (and equal vetoes) when it comes to the use of their songs. So the quotation may have been cleared for broadcast use, but not for DVD. More likely it wasn't cleared for broadcast because somebody slipped up or thought there would be no problem if the lyric were spoken, and they had to pay-up after the fact when they heard from the song-ower's lawyers. Then they either decided not to bother with the issue or balked at the price when it came time to clear the line for DVD. (The other possibility is that British copyright law is different than U.S. law in this respect, and there was no problem using the spoken line on the other side of The Pond, but would have been here.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Mike*SC]

Sure, lines and scenes are edited out later for a variety of reasons, but it's not the same issue as music clearance rights.

The issue with music is that everybody knows that money is owed, but depending on how the rights were purchased back when the show was first produced (i.e. for what media, which regions, and for how long), the rights may have to be repurchased for home video, with no guidelines as to the price demanded.

You don't have to buy the rights to say the words "Mickey Mouse" or "Budweiser." But you have to clear those copyrighted names through the legal department, because if those references are judged by Disney or Anheuser-Busch to be disparaging, these companies can sue. Even if the legal department decides the usage is fair, many production companies will delete the reference anyway, because they don't want to chance a lawsuit which will be expensive even if they win it. And yes, there's insurance for this sort of thing, but the deductibles are not cheap.

(This is all separate from paid product placement or the "monetizing" of brand placement into a show. This must be negotiated weeks in advance, and can come at the expense of other advertisers unwilling to place commercials on a show.)

There's no reason that one should have to renegotiate anything to get to say those same copyrighted names on home video. The reason they are sometimes deleted is because a lawsuit was threatened at the time of the original airing, or a new legal department is more cautious, or the company named has become more litigious. Occasionally, the legal department may simply have failed to notice the usage the first time around. And so, the reference is deleted.

But this is a completely different scenario from the deletion of music and/or lyrics.

 

[Elena S]

Maybe so, but it still renders a set incomplete.

 

[Mike*SC]

Yes. But your question was if they were edited out because of copyright, not simply whether lines were ever cut!