TV Series: Batman Season 2

Yesterday I finally finished watching the second season of "Batman". Better late than never. There are subtle preparations for the third season. In the last four episodes Commissioner Gordon mentioned his daughter Barbara twice, although she wasn't shown on screen. I'll discuss her in my next post, because there are some curiosities about her introduction into the series.

The episodes follow an inflexible formula, but it works. A crime occurs, so Commissioner Gordon rings Batman and asks him for his assistance. Batman and Robin appear at the police station at the beginning of every episode. The Commisioner and his associate Chief O'Hara must be the most incompetent policemen ever. They don't do anything. They just sit in their office all day and rely on Batman to fight crime. Isn't that what the police should be doing?

The Joker is played by Cesar Romero. He was a famous film actor with over a hundred roles from 1932 to 1977, but in retrospect he's only remembered for his role as the Joker. His badly applied lipstick was a new look for the Joker, but due to the popularity of the television series this was soon copied by the comics.

The Joker was a humorous character in the TV series, just as he was portrayed in the 1960's comics.

Women couldn't resist the Joker's charm. I don't know what they saw in him.

They also fell for Bruce Wayne. That's understandable. Adam West was a handsome man!

The Batman television series was broadcast from 1966 to 1968, but it wasn't released on disc until 2014. This creates a problem for copyright lawyers. According to the Berne Convention the series is now in the public domain, because the copyright of television episodes expires 50 years after their first broadcast. The television studios don't accept that the copyright expired less than five years after the release on Blu-ray. That's understandable. They invested a lot of money in the remastering.

Most countries signed the Berne Copyright Convention. There are clauses allowing countries to impose longer copyright dates if they wish. This might have been feasible in 1986, when the Convention was first signed, but today the world is more of a global marketplace. In America exceptions to the Berne Convention are frequent. If a publisher says, "Hey, this old book is still a bestseller, I want to extend the copyright", he can go to court and request a copyright extension. Usually the extension will be granted. I assume that 20th Century Fox would do so, if they haven't done so already. They want to protect the income from their shiny new Blu-ray box set.

Great Britain and the European Union, on the other hand, keep strictly to the Berne Convention. Extensions aren't allowed, as was seen in the lengthy court case about the Goodies radio show. So what does that mean? Quite simply, if someone in England decides to duplicate the Batman Blu-rays and sell them, he's not breaking the law. He can also show the TV series to a paying audience, regardless of what the warning text on the discs says. But private copies of the Blu-rays are illegal in America.

Publishing copies of the Batman episodes online is a difficult matter. If someone in America posts an episode online, he's breaking the law. If someone in England posts an episode online, it depends where the server is located. The Goodies radio series was an interesting case. The BBC released the series on CD after the copyright had already expired. Someone promptly encoded the series as MP3s and published them online. The BBC issued a copyright complaint, and the MP3s were removed. Normally that would have been the end of the matter, but the person appealed against the removal. After a long court case, in which the BBC's lawyers tried to say that the episodes were public domain but the scripts weren't (!!!), the MP3s were allowed to be published again.

So what will happen with "Batman"? Personally, I'm happy to buy the official box set. It's cheap, considering what I got for my money. I doubt a bootlegger could offer the series any cheaper. On the other hand, it's a matter of principle. If anyone is taken to court for selling copies of the series, I'll be in the front row shouting for his legal rights. The law is the law. The law should be enforced as-is. It can't be changed from case to case, just because something seems unfair. If the law is unfair, it can be changed. The Berne Convention can be updated. Until then, it should be followed as it is.

The Batman TV series is in the public domain.

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