Mr Khan said:
Having the rights to do something doesn't necessarily mean you retain those rights forever. A good instance is "A Muppet Family Christmas," (special of theirs from the late 80's) which contained the muppets singing a lot of christmas songs. However, for some of the songs, the rights were only for the initial TV broadcasts, and when the special was released on DVD, they had to cut those songs out. Equally, these rights are not universal for all nations, to again cite this specific case, the UK and German DVD releases of "A Muppet Family Christmas" retained those songs
Kinda an obscure reference, but it illustrates my point. There may be actual legal grounds here, or it could just be NoA being jittery. |
Mystery Science Theater 3000 had similar problems since they show was about making fun of really lousy old movies. They producers had to pay for a liscense to each movie for each episode, and once the liscense expired in I think five years time, they couldn't re-air the episode without paying for the liscense again. Some people like Sandy Franks wouldn't even re-sell them a liscense because of insulted he felt over MST3K ripping on his awful bastardizations of Gamera.
It's probably the same reason the DVD releases are so random. The people putting out the DVD's probably go with whatever
movies they can get the rights to for a DVD release.
