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Perhaps the chair was a bad analogy in some ways, since a physical chair is not quite the same as an idea or movie. Off the cuff I couldn't come up with an appropriate analogy. My point was to just put the thought out there that perhaps it is actually *wrong* to duplicate things unlawfully rather than paying for them -- to evoke the same feeling for one set of workers as others get all the time by default.
Og, as for your point (which I didn't address specifically, now that I reread some posts and explanations) ... I agree with you on that one! Yes, if this is changing and editing that is going on without the knowledge of the screenwriter/director/etc., and is done solely to have a "cleaned up" version, then NO. It's copyright infringement. My example DOES hold then, because you would never get away with the analogous situation in the publishing world: No one's allowed to take your copyrighted novel and edit it down without your permission just to take out the parts they don't like. That too is copyright infringement.
I also know authors who haven't liked the way their books are abridged for audiobooks, BUT they and their agents have signed agreements for this stuff and decided to grit their teeth and bare it in order to get the audiobooks made. (This is an author who routinely writes 1000-page books and that gets too costly to do sometimes on audiobook. She reluctantly agreed to an abridgement but had no say in how it was abridged. She regretted it later. BUT, it was legal -- she agreed to it in writing through her agent.)
Og, as for your point (which I didn't address specifically, now that I reread some posts and explanations) ... I agree with you on that one! Yes, if this is changing and editing that is going on without the knowledge of the screenwriter/director/etc., and is done solely to have a "cleaned up" version, then NO. It's copyright infringement. My example DOES hold then, because you would never get away with the analogous situation in the publishing world: No one's allowed to take your copyrighted novel and edit it down without your permission just to take out the parts they don't like. That too is copyright infringement.
I also know authors who haven't liked the way their books are abridged for audiobooks, BUT they and their agents have signed agreements for this stuff and decided to grit their teeth and bare it in order to get the audiobooks made. (This is an author who routinely writes 1000-page books and that gets too costly to do sometimes on audiobook. She reluctantly agreed to an abridgement but had no say in how it was abridged. She regretted it later. BUT, it was legal -- she agreed to it in writing through her agent.)
