- In terms of copyright, everything that applies to Hitchcock's films also applies to this one. Simply put, it's always been copyrighted everywhere except for the US. There, its copyright lapsed for several decades but was restored when the US belatedly fell into line with the rest of the world, effective from 1 January 1996. As DVD came along a couple of years later (and BD 10 years later), that means every unauthorised disc is a deliberate bootleg.
I realise a lot of these discs have been in DVDC's database for a long time, but that doesn't make them any less illegitimate, or quality-wise, even worth owning. How about we remove them and add a generic explanatory footnote?
Although removing the relatively few and uniformly terrible Metropolis boots only improved its comparison, there are possible reasons for treating this one a little differently. It could be argued that:
- - Deleting the boots halves the number of DVDs currently listed.
- To those not so concerned with video quality, some of these boots at least have unique modern scores, even if they're seldom synced to the film itself.
- Even I've made an exception in noting the original and best bootlegs of the supposedly PD version. Many cheapo DVDs are lesser quality copies of those (apart from the pirates of the restored versions).
