ALL SCI-FI

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

Wayne, you insist on complicating a simple concept. I certainly don't want to throw out the copyright laws — in fact, just the reverse. I'm the one who isn't too crazy about the idea that the copyright law lets me own my copyrighted material for a period of time and then decides it isn't mine anymore.

All I'm saying is that if something starts out belonging to me, it should keep on belonging to me for as long as I live. And if I give it to somebody else — either while I'm alive or in my will — it should then belong to them.

Why is that such a radical idea? Civilization won't collapse if somebody doesn't get to use Mickey Mouse to make a buck after Walt has passed away.

That's seems to be the major difference in our attitudes toward is this. You equated the patents on life-saving medicines to the copyright on art and literature. But that's not true. They aren't the same thing at all.

Medicines to treat illness are developed by teams of researchers employed by drug companies — a service to society, rewarded by the free enterprise system that permits them to make a profit. The researchers do it for the money they're paid and the personal reward of being competent in their field.

The only ownership involved in this process is in the hands of the corporate entity that runs the company. Their purpose in creating the medicines is to make a profit.

Society has rightly determined that — for the good of mankind — the medicines these companies develop should remain their property for a specified period of time, after which they can be legally produced by other companies, so they can be sold at an affordable price.

But with a person's artistic creations, absolutely none of that reasoning applies. My artwork and my novels, for example, aren't required by mankind for it's health and survival. Nobody will sicken and die if I burn everything I've ever created, or if my grandchildren put it all in a warehouse and refuse to share it with the world.

I know you think I'm simplifying a complex issue, but the core of this concept is the basic right of ownership — something the constitution was written to protect. The Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution declare that governments cannot deprive any person of "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law.

What I'm arguing is that artistic creations are property that should not revert to public domain after a period of time. The law defines these as intellectual property — which includes music, literature, and other artistic works. Taking ownership of someone's intellectual property away from them just because society "wants it" is not the same as regulating the development of life-saving drugs.

Society doesn't "need" my work. They just want it. That being the case, they should either buy it from me or whoever I passed it on to — regardless of how long it's been owned.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

If you want to see somebody complicate a simple concept, just get some lawyers involved.

I think you're looking at the whole picture as something personal. Nowadays, thanks to the Supreme Court, corporations are "persons". (You know, it used to be "one person, one vote"; now it's "one dollar, one vote".) So whatever rights are enjoyed by biological persons are also enjoyed by corporations. And if you ever worked for a company that designs patentable things, you probably had to sign over your rights to the company for anything you invented while under their employ.

I wouldn't worry if I were you. With this country now a democratic corporatocracy, we should soon see patent and copyright laws changing to allow ownership in perpetuity.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

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I discovered we had a duplicate thread for this movie (started by me unfortunately, after this one) so I pasted the comments from it to this reply.

[Bud Brewster]

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If you've run out of things to say about this movie, find out what other folks are saying by consulting our MULTI-BOARD ALPHABETICAL INDEX!
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* At the Earth's Core (1976)

At the Earth's Core (1976) @ All Sci-Fi

At The Earth's Core @ CHFB

DOUG MCCLURE meets the MONSTERS @ CHFB

Warlords at the Earth's Core That Time Forgot @ CHFB

At The Earth's Core (1976) @ Nautilus Submarine
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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_____________ At the Earth's Core 1976 Trailer


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I'm kind of on the side of thinking that I'm a fan of this one. The film does seem geared towards boys under the age of 14 years, but an adult can place himself in a certain frame of mind for this.

I liked the whole beginning, taking place in Burroughs' Victorian Age, as the two heroes (McClure & Cushing) prepare to descend into the Earth in their machine, to the acclaim of a small Victorian crowd. (Didn't the first sci-fi film, A Trip to the Moon in 1902 have a similar scene?) Most of the FX involve back projection, or so it looks like to me. There are 'men-in-suits' — some of these reminded me of The Land Unknown, from the fifties, in terms of the dinosaur suits.

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Once down below, we're presented with an ochre-colored or scarlet-tinged sub-world, filled with faintly mythological-looking beasts.

The creatures in this one, rather than looking scary and monstrous, come across as sympathetic to me. McClure, for example, battles one in an arena. It resembles a clumsy hippo, and I felt sorry for it when it lost. Likewise, later, there's this toad-like beastie which shoots flame and is killed by Cushing with a bunch of arrows; poor thing, I thought.

Yes, the beasts look fake, but you gotta be in a frame of mind, remember? I had no sympathy for the ruling chicken-like Mahars, however, who were pretty annoying. Kill 'em all, I say — I'm with McClure on that one.



The middle third of this film I find to be a bit on the slow side; the scenes in the arena are too long. The nicknames of some natives are amusing: the toughest guy whom McClure has to fight is called 'The Ugly One', Another is named 'The Sly One' — this may have been taken from Burrough's original story. I did read it, but that was over 30 years ago.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10

This was director Kevin Connor's follow-up to THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975), but it wasn't a sequel to that one. The sequel to that one was THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT in 1977. The latter film had Dana Gillespie as a cave-girl. AT THE EARTH'S CORE, of course, has Caroline Munro.



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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Pow]

Smoke and Mirrors by Mark D. Wolf.

---has some of the worst monster-suits ever designed, built and filmed, period.

Someone other than Amicus could have made a terrific adventure film out of this Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.

Sidebar: Yep.

[Bud Brewster]

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Brent jokingly referred to me as a "sourpus" for not liking this dissapointing excuse for a movie. Well, I guess the film critic at The New York Times is a sourpuss, too, because this is his opinion, according the Wikipedia article.
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Among contemporary critics, The New York Times was not impressed:

"All the money used to make At the Earth's Core seems to have been spent on building monsters with parrotlike beaks that open, close, and emit a steady squawling as if someone were vacuuming next door.

Close up, the monsters look like sections of rough concrete wall, and the decision to film them in closeup is only one example of the total lack of talent or effort with which the picture is made . . . the movie is a kind of no-talent competition in which the acting, the script, the direction and the camera-work vie for last place."
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Maurice]

I find it ironic when people profess to want indefinite Copyright protection and then share works currently under Copyright without permission, let alone paying for it. Who amongst us has licensed the images we share without a second thought here and elsewhere?

Indefinite Copyright would mean a lot of works we love based on the works of long-dead authors and artists—like Verne—would never have happened. And do we want to be paying the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren of Shakespeare for Forbidden Planet?

And one long-term problem with endless Copyright is that any particularly memorable property will eventually get sold to some corporation who will own it forever, which means, eventually, nothing will be in the PD and only those rich corporations will profit from any of those infinitely protected works.
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"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art."
― Orson Welles