Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Now if some Canadian server would do all the Lester Dent Doc Savages. I've heard the old blackmask versions were well edited.....
|
Yes, they were fairly good. As were the Shadow releases.
Blackmask was "last man standing" on this stuff. Conde Nast claimed they had the rights, and sent a lawyer to talk to Blackmask's proprietor. The lawyer said "You can walk away from this with no muss or fuss: just remove that content and we'll be happy." He refused, and chose to fight it in court, using a defense that Conde Nast had effectively abandoned the properties and forfeited any rights by making no attempt to
do anything with them for many years. Unfortunately, the defense didn't fly, and Blackmask went off the air rather suddenly, as the server got confiscated.
The discovery phase of the case was interesting, including details on how the rights to a lot of stuff had been bought for a song from Lester Dent's grieving widow by lawyers for the original publisher who cared nothing for her plight and simply saw an opportunity to get the stuff cheap.
Conde Nast was under pressure to generate revenue, and latched onto the Shadow and Doc Savage, because Sony was interested in possibly licensing them for film properties with 8 figure licensing fees. Couldn't very well let it lapse into PD and forfeit the license money...
Blackmask went away, but the process seems to have insured that CN won't be able to keep the rights a lot longer. Meanwhile, Blackmask was reborn as Munseys, minus the offending content. And I believe the old Blackmask CDs and DVDs that included the Doc Savage and shadow stuff are available via Bit Torrent...
______
Dennis