Is it legal to post movie and tv show scripts???

[yoda313]

I was thinking of posting movie and tv show scripts on my website but was concerned about legalities. Are these truly copyrighted?? I mean its not like you can really go out and buy all four drafts of the shooting script to TITANIC or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It's not a traditional market like movies or music. But there are tons of websites out there with movie scripts. Are these legitmate???? Or is it there's so many they can't stop all of them??? Anyone know???

[adam]

Any original work other than titles and short phrases becomes copyrighted automatically, in the United States, as soon as it becomes fixed in any tangible medium. Writing it down is all it takes.

So you can probably assume thost scripts were written down at some point before the film was made. Even if they were transcribed after the fact by someone watching the movie, it'd still be a derivative work of the film itself. So yes they are copyrighted and yes it would be an infringement to publish them without permission. But like you said, I doubt the copyright holder's care; they've already gotten everything they need out of the script. I did a caselaw search and found nothing. I imagine anyone who's had to take down such content just did so after receiving a cease and desist letter. Not much reason to fight over such a thing.

But lack of market means nothing, most copyrighted works in fact have zero market. That letter you wrote to your pen pal in 5th grade was protected by copyright too.

[doppletwo]

They would most likely get mad (take action against you) only if you posted scripts to movies that aren't out yet.

[JohnnyCNote]

You could probably safely post a link to other sites that host scripts.....

[smearbrick1]

Just look at www.script-o-rama.com. Drew links to external sources for all his scripts.

[yoda313]

Any original work other than titles and short phrases becomes copyrighted automatically, in the United States, as soon as it becomes fixed in any tangible medium. Writing it down is all it takes.

So you can probably assume thost scripts were written down at some point before the film was made. Even if they were transcribed after the fact by someone watching the movie, it'd still be a derivative work of the film itself. So yes they are copyrighted and yes it would be an infringement to publish them without permission. But like you said, I doubt the copyright holder's care; they've already gotten everything they need out of the script. I did a caselaw search and found nothing. I imagine anyone who's had to take down such content just did so after receiving a cease and desist letter. Not much reason to fight over such a thing.

But lack of market means nothing, most copyrighted works in fact have zero market. That letter you wrote to your pen pal in 5th grade was protected by copyright too.

Kinda what I figured. But thanks for confirming the hunch.

You could probably safely post a link to other sites that host scripts.....

Yeah thats a good idea. Maybe I could have a "script link" section and have it easily accesible. Maybe dig up the star trek episode scripts and post those links in my star trek section. Then find links for the star wars scripts and post them in my star wars forums.

I appreciate the input folks