15 thoughts on “Ummm….”

  1. Yes, those rights have been sublicensed to a company called Swank. Call up any college film society — they’ll have plenty of stories about how annoying it is to work with that company.

    Surprisingly, there actually isn’t a big amount of money involved. I’ve seen film revenue reports, and Swank delivers something ridiculously small, like 0.05% of total revenues. My guess is that Tim Swank was a smooth talker who closed some kind of sweet deal back in the ’60s when they were hard up on cash, and the studios just can’t get rid of him. But these contractual things are very murky.

  4. In a few years they’ll be putting up “Unauthorized viewers will be prosecuted”…so you can’t bring your pals to watch a movie unless they’ve got a license.

  6. Those warnings are symbolic of what the movie companies think of their customers: They are all criminals. No “Thank you for purchasing this movie”. Nope, just a stupid warning.

  8. I wonder how many hospital patients came to that warning page, and immediately shot out of their beds and turned off the player to keep themselves from watching further. Then adding insult to injury, had to limp out of the hospital to return the disc to Blockbuster before the late charges kicked in, all the while trying to hold the back of the gown shut with one hand to keep the other video shoppers from getting an unwelcome butt view.

    All that and they never even got to see the movie. (And people wonder why Blockbuster is in bankruptcy).

  9. Interesting … that oil rigs, hospitals and prisons stuff has been on UK videos and DVDs for years but I’ve never seen it on a US title …

  14. Yeah, I saw the warning flash by and said “WAIT, did I just see ‘oil rigs and prisons’ in there?” Backed it up and snapped a pic because I still couldn’t believe it.

  15. The iTune EULA is the best. Yes, because, everyone is going to sit there and read every page of it. Lawyers gone wild.

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