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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.
Why do these people run things?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
As a big fan of Jack Benny's work I have to say CBS aren't a bunch of mother fuckers. They're a bunch of horse fuckers.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
A lot of the stuff in Looney Tunes / Merry Melodies comes from Benny. And he's the master of timing. It's brilliant.
Seriously, refusing to allow this public domain work to be restored at no cost to them means they are not holding up their end of the copyright bargain and so they should now lose their rights and protection under said laws. There's a social contract at work and it's stupid acts like this and the Sonny Bono perpetual protection of Mickey Mouse Act that make me have no qualms about "pirating" material when I feel like it. If they don't want to play nice then I see no reason to play their game at all.
Perhaps the federal government could appropriate the masters via eminent domain and make them available through the Library of Congress.
...by copyright, as long as CBS owns the only copies they control it and it is, therefor, not in the public domain. The copies are their property to do with as they see fit.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is a perfect example of all that is wrong with copyright as it exists today. Protection is granted to creators in order to increase works available to the public, not hide them away.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
CBS claims that there could be music clearance problems--which is an entirely legitimate possibility. The episodes are probably public domain because when they were made copyrights had to be renewed and there's little chance they were renewed. But if the music came from any outside source, it's quite possible that they *did* renew it, leaving the music in copyright today--and leaving CBS liable for serious damages in court if they just give the episodes to some fans to copy. Blame the copyright system, but do not blame CBS.
So kdawson posted a bunch of ill-informed sensationalism and invective on the Slashdot front page? I'm shocked.
This is a problem with the current copyright system as well. There is no mandate that a copy be put on file with the Library of Congress so that when the copyright does expire, someone might have access to it.
By my calculations, the copyright on Windows 1.0 expires in 2080. Do you think anyone will have a binary sitting around, much less the source to that program at that date? Highly doubtful.
Just because a performance is in the public domain doesn't mean that the physical master tapes cannot be privately owned and controlled. I suspect that part of CBS's reluctance to release the programs is the less-than-politically-correct portrayal of Rochester, just as Disney has buried some if its work in its vaults (e.g. Song of the South). Before you condemn them all as a bunch of idiots, releasing the masters is a zero-gain proposition for the owners, and there is a potential downside that it's their duty to consider.
I wonder if the National Archives would consider beginning eminent domain proceedings to force a buyout of the material.
As it is in the public domain, its "eminent domain price" would be its auction value of the originals after high-quality copies have been made available to all for free.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Museum of Television and Radio is now known as The Paley Center for Media - named for William S. Paley, the founder of CBS. This isn't that hard to figure out.
There is so much in the summary, the articles and the web pages associated with this that fall somewhere between hype and bald faced lies that I'm not going to waste my time picking it apart. Someone saw a sympathetic audience and played it. You've been played like Clapton's Strat and you made exactly the music they wanted you to. Too bad nobody saw fit to investigate any of this. Anyone that actually gave shit about anything more than the chance to spout off might have at least tried to contact any of the several broadcast museums like Paley Center, Museum of TV and Radio or Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Come on kids, try reconciling the fact that they've got these things locked in a vault with the accusation of "failing to preserve" and try to imagine the mental gymnastics required not to trip over that if you weren't already jumping head first into what you thought was yet another copyright law bashing. I'm astounded at how few bullshit meters got pegged by this.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
TFA even says that they're in the public domain.
Possibly true, although TFA does not provide much to justify this assertion. The shows were not broadcast (i.e. unpublished), so it is not at all certain that they will enter the public domain. The copyright status was not stated in TFA, which quoted a CBS exec as saying the rights situation was muddled.
If a work is kept private, it need not ever enter the public domain. Its owner may choose to release it, but there is no obligation to do so. If a work is published under copyright, it will eventually enter the public domain (although the wait is appallingly long). If it is published without copyright, it is immediately in the public domain.
From the third-hand information in TFS & TFA, it seems that these shows were not broadcast or released in other form. Unpublished works are private property, so CBS' stance is legally correct, whatever the wishes of others.
Grow up, this has nothing to do with copyright law.
...
...they're refusing to hand over tape reels which they own to someone else. It's not the right thing for them to do, but it is within their rights, and would be within their rights even if intellectual property were outlawed.
And this is what makes the copyright vs public domain issue moot. Even if everyone has the right to copy them, CBS is not a public library and is under no obligation to hand over their tapes. But if they were registered for copyright, should not a copy have been submitted to a library of record (e.g. LOC)?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
No. It's the supreme court's fault that they misuse article III as if it were article V, which it in no way resembles or implies; it's the supreme court's fault that they disobey the constitution on behalf of the entire government; it's the supreme court's fault that the government is operating far outside its constitutionally authorized bounds.
The supreme court set themselves up -- unauthorized by the people -- as those who could re-define the constitution. Then, on top of that, they worked, and are working, to destroy everything it stands for. That's why they're at the top of that list. They enable the congress to make, and keep in force, laws that are explicitly forbidden, or not authorized, by the constitution.
The constitution has one critical flaw: It has no teeth. Violating it, on the part of judges, legislators... there is no penalty. Because of this, they can do whatever they want. And they do. This is why we are suffering under the inversion of the commerce clause. This is why we have ex post facto laws. This is why eight of the ten amendments of the bill of rights have been turned into caricatures of themselves in currently extant law. And this is why copyright law no longer resembles anything even vaguely implied in Article I, section 8, paragraph 8.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Copyright is about making an artificial scarcity, not quality control.
Flat out wrong, twice.
Many museums permit camera's, tripod or not. Secondly I can buy Mona Lisa towels, curtains, place-mats, tablecloths and reprints in a copyright-fearing western nation because you are permitted to replicate the image as it's out of copyright.
Now if, I say if a museum did forbid camera's it would not be for "copy protection" it would be so you didn't disturb the other patrons at worse, to make sure you buy the print from the museum gift shop, at the very worse.
Copy protection is for quality control, poppycock. How this tripe gets modded interesting is beyond me.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Let's play devil's advocate for a second.
These materials are in the public domain. This means that CBS, who owns the physical media on which these performances are recorded, would owe no royalties or other payments to any other rightsholders should it choose to air them or sell them or monetize them in any other way.
The fanclub wants them preserved (which in this case means copied) and is willing to pay for this, thereby turning what is a potentially valuable asset with no liabilities attached into a worthless commodity.
Jack Benny's estate supports the fan club's desire to copy... I mean, preserve the content... however the basis of the request to do so is that the material is in the public domain, so the estate has no more right than anyone else to determine what should happen to it, which leaves only CBS, which owns and possesses the physical media.
This is being called destruction, since presumably CBS has no actual plans to do anything with this footage: if it did, presumably it would have done before now. So if they do not choose to allow copying... I mean, preservation, and something were to happen to the originals in their possession, it would be lost.
This is admittedly a shame, and is a fault of how such things have been handled up to now. It certainly would be nice if CBS, and other holders of such materials, had a friendly policy of allowing such materials to be disseminated once they enter the public domain.
However, no one should be surprised when this doesn't happen. From now on, content creators need to be careful about what arrangements they enter into with publishers and distributors, and arrange for physical copies to be archived somewhere, undistributed, ready for preservation when rights expire and materials enter the public domain (assuming this ever happens again in our lifetimes).
No longer the case, we have been shafted, again. Monetization Uber Alles. From Wikipedia:
"In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved another Stewart film, Rear Window) to enforce its claim to the copyright. While the film's copyright had not been renewed, the plaintiffs were able to argue its status as a derivative work of a work still under copyright. It's a Wonderful Life is no longer shown as often on television as it was before enforcement of that derivative copyright."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_wonderful_life#Release>
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.