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CBS Refuses To Preserve Jack Benny Footage
goosman writes "The president of the International Jack Benny Fan Club had the opportunity to review some holdings of the CBS vaults while assisting them with some transfers. In the vaults she found 25 shows on film that were unreleased, but in the public domain. The IJBFC offered to pay for the digitization and preservation of these shows; they got a letter of enthusiastic support from the Benny estate. CBS has so far refused to allow this preservation to happen." BoingBoing and TechDirt have both covered this act of cultural destruction.
Replying to my own article because it's even worse than that, as said in a very interesting comment in the boingboing article: apparently
1) the person who started this whole thing sells copies of shows, and they're not all PD.
2) she's a fan who's using this as an excuse to expand her collection.
3) her claim that she was "overseeing the color specials transfer" seems to be a lie.
4) CBS is willing to license these episodes out; they did not, as falsely claimed, say that it would be too much trouble even if they could iron out the legal issues
5) the episodes are not some unique thing that only CBS has copies of
Pity Johnny Carson is also dead. He and Benny were extremely close, and he would have raised holy hell over this. And the dude had a lot of clout.
Can't get outraged, though. Media conglomerates have already used up most of my outrage, and I want to save what's left for genocide, the Republican party, and other serious stuff.