Gotta Love the Swedes

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=IinkcR2_8os[/youtube]

Variety reports that Swedish people are better than Americans for one really great reason:

STOCKHOLM — Swedish film directors won a landmark case in their country’s high court Tuesday, when it ruled that TV companies must seek the agreement of helmers before inserting commercial breaks into feature films.

The court said that by interrupting Vilgot Sjoman’s “Alfred” and Claes Eriksson’s “The Shark That Knew Too Much” with commercials, pubcaster TV4 had violated the directors’ copyright.

The duo’s lawyer Hakan Sjostrom said, “This is a very important fundamental principle concerning copyright.”

In its ruling, which cannot be appealed, the court said that commercial breaks destroy the viewer’s overall experience of a film.

Even if the commercial is placed between two different scenes, it still breaks the interplay between the scenes that the helmer had envisioned.

Commercials also make the film longer, which the court said is not unimportant.

Imagine that. Television is a great tool for information and entertainment that quickly became an advertising delivery device. Maybe our American directors will start to get uppity about how their own films are chopped up to suit annoying commercials.

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