I voted for the Year of general release! This is IMHO the official theatrical release, available to everyone and not only to selected people.

The only person trying to turn it into an issue is you Skip.
Voltaire's post is a simple query. The fact he's set it up as a poll is his decision, and is an effective way of seeing if the community all interpret the rule the same way.

Back to topic, I voted for general release, however I believe a limited public release should also count. But you included that with the festival option which I don't think we should count.

I say the "Production Year" should be the year the movie had been produced and not released or else this should be renamed to "Release Year". Plus a movie could be released later than in the CoO in other countries and then we would have different production years for the same movie, which does not make any sense to me.

No, he didn't ask, he started a poll, north. And the point that Martin brought up while valid has also been debated, cussed, discussed, re-cussed and some more. I will say this, if my memory serves me, the biggest issue over this question revolved around this being data that is frequently outside of the disc or the case, though not always. It came down to trying to decide on a how to document since pure Production data is not always readily available, and as I recall it was discovered that sometimes the potential sources presented conflicting data sometimes, which was saw as a bloody nightmare. Ken chose to retain Production Year for the field name so we had to define it, we knew there would be some debate over the name of the field but that was outside of our bailiwick.

Skip

Quoting skipnet50:

Quote:
No, he didn't ask, he started a poll, north. And the point that Martin brought up while valid has also been debated, cussed, discussed, re-cussed and some more. I will say this, if my memory serves me, the biggest issue over this question revolved around this being data that is frequently outside of the disc or the case, though not always. It came down to trying to decide on a how to document since pure Production data is not always readily available, and as I recall it was discovered that sometimes the potential sources presented conflicting data sometimes, which was saw as a bloody nightmare. Ken chose to retain Production Year for the field name so we had to define it, we knew there would be some debate over the name of the field but that was outside of our bailiwick.

Skip

I read this three times, but I'm still trying to figure out what it is you're saying exactly, and how it relates to Voltaire53's (legitimate) question. Let me be quick to point out that this isn't a dig at you, nor am I trying to be funny - I just really don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Edit: trying to rephrase your comments, I didn't manage to come any further than: "This piece of data unfortunately isn't always readily available from the disc or the case." Ehm, indeed it isn't. So?

While I sort of agree with Martin, there is also a problem that can arise from that as well.

For instance the movie Alpha Dog was filmed in 2005. But due to the capture of the fugitive reshoots had to happen. The film was first at New Line Cinema who showed it at Sundance Film Festival in 2006. There were legal troubles between the film and the real life case. Plus some in fighting between the director and the studio kept the film from being released for many months. Eventually Universal got the distribution rights and released it in January of 2007.

The back of the DVD has a copyright of 2007 by Universal. So which would we go by here, the year it was produced, the year it was shown at Sundance(2006) or the year it was released in theaters (2007)? 3 years to choose from here.

Personally I would go by the copyright year.

Apologies if I upset you (or anyone else), Skip, but I chose to do this as a poll purely because I couldn't find an answer elsewhere and I thought that a poll would allow people to simple summarise rather than going over old ground.

I honestly hoped this would stop long rambling arguments that had gone before, it was not my intention to question the points raised previously or ignore them, just to get the result summarised.
To be fair Skip, if Id simply asked rather than set up a poll you may have been able to tell me what you believe to be the outcome of previous discussions but I dare say a it might have simply opened up old wounds and had other posts disagreeing with you... sorry to say this seems to have happened anyway.

FWIW if you are willing I honestly would appreciate it if you did say what was the outcome of the previous discussions, as you obviously seem to know, but if you choose not to I respect your decision though I will re-iterate by making this a poll I was not intending to cause problems but to avoid them and make the result as clear as possible rather than a stalemate of oposing views.

As to Martin and AESP's point that they don't agree with the Rule as written... well, yeah, I may not agree with it either but it IS the Rule so the only two options as I see it are the two interpretations I've laid out.

I should be the first public release. That's not necessarily the general release. Film festivals are usually public as well.

EDIT: But I would support a rule change in favour of the earliest copyright date.