I decided to put this in a separate thread instead of the other currently active Country of Origin thread so as to not derail the discussion. I get separating Quebec from the rest of Canada in terms of Locality, as they use a different rating system, but why are they separated for Country of Origin? Would merging the latter mess up the former somehow? I ask this because as a proud Canadian I tend to see Quebec as that sibling that we squabble with all the time but at the end of the day they're still family.  And I'm betting that more than a few movies have been shot in both Ottawa and Gatineau since it's the same area. If a movie originated in Quebec, it originated in Canada.

“In England, everything is permitted except what is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden except what is permitted. In France, everything is permitted, even what is prohibited. In the USSR, everything is prohibited, even what is permitted.”
- Attributed to Winston Churchill

The question is – how strictly do we interpret the rules? It is true that the rules don’t say that we can research production companies if they are not listed in the credits. But neither do they say that we can not do that. My suspicion is that Ken didn’t even consider that there might be no production company listed in the credits.

If we were to apply the rules absolutely, a credit such as “Story: John Doe” would not be accepted. The accepted credit is “Story by”, and the “by” is not marked as optional (unlike for example “Costumes [by]”). I don’t think that’s what Ken intended.

Ken himself has said that not everything can be covered in the rules. The implication – as I see it – is that we are to use our best judgment when something isn’t covered. In the context of the Churchill quote, I lean more towards England than Germany.

Quote:
The copyright owner of a film was either the producer or a production company.

I’m sorry, that is just not correct. Ownership of a copyright is similar to ownership of other types of personal property. A copyright and copyright protection can be sold, given by designation, or transferred just like real estate.

If the Easter Egg is a Commentary track, should we still list the audio even if it's left out of the Features? This is the case for Sizzle Beach USA (possibly an unintentional Easter Egg) where I discovered years ago that there was a Commentary track not listed on the case or menus. If you don't use your remote or software to change the audio, you won't find it. Right now it's not listed with the audio details but should it be?

Great idea!

One thing that's come up is, what to do when two versions that are otherwise identical including cover images, but one is a snapper and the other is a keep case. For one Something Weird DVD I have the case is a snapper with a lovely fold out front cover, but at some point it appears to have be switched to a keep case without the UPC changing (I'm guessing here that the snapper came first as snappers in general have fallen out of fashion). Is there any way of noting the existence of both in the profile itself without creating an alternate ID just for the case type? If not, *should* I create a separate profile even though the case type is the only difference?

This isn't a perfect system but I've been adding them when they've been intermingled with the cast and leaving them out when they've been listed in a Stunts and/or Crew section. Not a perfect system given that the cast version might be comparable in terms of work done, but that way I'm not changing the cast section as much from how it appears in the credits.

Alphabetical if listed that way, otherwise column by column.

But a self-rule I tend to go by (and no one has said anything either way as most of my audits are low to no budget horror releases maybe 2 other people own, often just a profile from release info with no voters) is this:

If the column is in a scroll and doesn't all fit on the screen at any one time, then I go row by row. I'm not rewinding when auditing/profiling!

Quoting Kathy:

Quote:
Quoting Mithi:
Buying physical media is so out of date.

That's what they said about vinyl. 

I wonder if, in the future, people will buy DVDs even though they can't even play them, as is the case for quite a lot of vinyl purchases.

I'd like to establish the common name for actor Ron(ald) (L.) Colby. Note that the raw CLT numbers are thrown off by a producer called Ronald Colby...

RONALD COLBY (2 titles, 1 confirmed, 45 profiles)
- Hide and Go Shriek
- Starman (confirmed by T!M)

RONALD L. COLBY (2 titles, 2 confirmed, 8 profiles)
- Moonlighting: Season Five (confirmed by T!M)
- Hunter: The Complete Series (confirmed by T!M)

RON COLBY (2 titles, 1 confirmed, 7 profiles)
- Defending Your Life (confirmed by T!M)
- The Gambler: The Adventure Continues

Assuming these six titles are accurately profiled (none of them appears under more than one name variant), it seems to be a tie between three name variants, with two titles for each one. In that case, the number of profiles acts as the tiebreaker, in which case the large number of 'Starman' profiles sways this towards Ronald Colby.