August 27, 2005
Ringtone Regulation (?)
An interesting post from Rafat Ali for Moco News, on how laws and contracts haven't caught up with advances in mobile technology and how movie script writers are not receiving royalties for ringtones based on movie quotes.
"It'll come as no surprise to you that ringtones formed from movie quotes are in the market and doing fairly well… and of course they offer a very simple path to a video ringtone. There's an interesting angle in this story though, which is the aim of the big movie studios to grab a slice of the giant ringtone pie that the big record labels are currently enjoying.
A month ago, screenwriter Jim Herzfeld saw on the Internet that a line of his “Meet the Parents” dialogue — in which Robert De Niro says to Ben Stiller, “I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?” — was among the more popular movie ring tones available.
Herzfeld receives royalty checks when clips from the movie are used elsewhere, even getting paid a couple of hundred dollars after “Meet the Parents” footage was shown in a De Niro tribute from the American Film Institute. But Herzfeld says he hasn't received a dime for ring tone dialogue, so he called the Writers Guild of America, West, to ask why that was the case. Herzfeld says the WGA had no helpful information..."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/ringtonia/archives/2005/08/009704.htm
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