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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.
I think the appropriate is:
(long pause) WELL!
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.
Whenever the camera focused on an old-timey radio the bots would call out "The Jack Benny Program!"
I'm double-dating myself, first for referencing mst3k and second for getting the joke. But dating yourself is legal in west virginia.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
Those films can't be in the public domain. They're only 39 years old.
Found something on Boing-Boing's comments which might make us take this with a grain of salt:
Here (with his permission) is a comment from Stan Taffel, who is a media preservationist and posted this to the Association of Moving Image Archivists listserv (AMIA-L). According to Stan, this controversy has been orchestrated by a fan club person who sells copies of the shows. Stan also tells me he's just been speaking with a company who is trying to secure a license to release the shows. Again, I'm just reporting what others have said, and have no personal stake or opinion other than that these shows should be made available to those who fervently want to see them.
Stan's comment:
"I have spoken to my source at CBS and am happy to report that the "hype" is just what it is; all hype.
CBS is ready and willing to sub license any property (as they did with Studio One etc.) for a fee.
Laura Leff, the "President" of the Jack Benny Fan Club she began a few years ago, is very good at
generating P R and has done a very good job at starting a Facebook petition against CBS and getting
articles and giving interviews pleading for the release of 25 Benny shows. She says that CBS has "locked"
these films away and will not be preserved. This is not the case.
The 25 Benny shows as well as the full run of the series is stored in state of the art facilities. The film elements
are safe and in good shape. CBS is also aware of the fact that Ms. Leff has a library of many existing shows
and charges for making copies; dupes of both copywritten and PD shows are offered from her website.
While I applaud her tenacity and love for Jack Benny (she organized a fine website and a convention a few
years ago), it seems that the truth has been diluted and the actual state of the predicament has been reported
in error. She is great at "self promoting". What it boils down to is this: She is a huge fan who just wants to
have copies of the shows and has gone this route to try and obtain them. CBS doesn't know how she was
"supervising" a transfer of one of the color shows as that is not her job. True, it was an NBC special and
maybe she was invited to see a conversion but "supervising"? She is friends with Joan Benny (Jack's
daughter) so perhaps that's how she was invited to see the inner workings. She has gained attention to her
fan club and her plight, however misrepresented it is.
CBS is not the enemy here; they will sub contract The Jack Benny out. As these are supposedly P D shows
(and that's not definite) there are other sources to locate them and once they're out, anyone can dupe them
and sell them for no fee. CBS isn't the only source for 16mm kinescopes. They even told her to try to find
them through other avenues, fully aware she wants to add them to her "collection".
Should these films be available - of course. However, business is business and CBS pays for the storage
of these and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of elements and that's not cheap. To give copies to her
for her archive is not so simple even if she pays for her copies. Maybe some company will come forward
and these shows will be seen. Time will tell."
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.
If I write a book when I'm 20, then publish it when I'm 70, my Copyright will extend from the year I published it, not when I wrote it.
That's not true. Since at least the Berne Convention in the 1970s, copyright protection is automatic, and publication is not a prerequisite. Your work is copyrighted the instant you lift your pen. Under the Berne Convention, however, whether you wrote the book when you were 20 or when you were 70, the copyright would still extend to 50 years after your death. Later amendments to copyright law in the United States have extended the term further, and the situation can get fairly complicated for "works for hire" or works owned by a company, as the Jack Benny show may be.
Breakfast served all day!
The headline and article are grossly misleading. CBS is not opposed to preserving this material. Rather, it is unwilling to assume the legal costs of protecting itself against copyright infringement suits if it distributes the material. While I agree that this is an unfortunate effect of the current copyright regime, it simply is not true that CBS is refusing to preserve these shows. They have not discarded them or destroyed them; they're keeping the originals in their vault.
Poor NBC. They can't even hold the title of "biggest jerks" for more than a week. Congratulations, CBS, the new champs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Like David Letterman. Tell him about this, I'm sure he'd be interested in helping... more than any other entertainer, he respects the Great Ones.
The Admin and the Engineer
Your idea might have merit, if it did not involve either:
1) Stealing CBS's property (taking the film somewhere else and copying it. The show might be PD, but it's their celluloid)
or
2) Using CBS's equipment/resources to copy it without their permission. (Also stealing).
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.
This has almost nothing to do with limiting copyright, quite the opposite. It is more of an example of what things would be like without copyright. Try to make a good copy of the Mona Lisa. Museums often don't allow you to bring a camera with a tripod to the museum, and for exactly this reason. They have the original copy, and have no good protection of copies being made.
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.
The heading of this news story makes it sound as if the Jack Benny episodes were about to be disposed of, whereas this is not the case. They are being preserved and stored, albeit not "preserved" in a digital sense. The comments made by Film Preservationist are an important commentary on this case. As for other TV luminaries being unable to view their own creations, there are precedents on this side of the pond. Peter Cook, I read, wanted to see some of his earlier BBC series but wasn't allowed. Later he found out they had been wiped, and I get the feeling that this was after his request as he offered to pay for copies. The same applies to another celebrity (Sandy Shaw?) who wanted copies of her shows, which were wiped pretty damn quick after her request. I've been following the hunt for missing TV for some time, and a write-up is here.
My web domain.
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).
Archivist: 'These Conan O'Brien DVDs of the Tonight Show are part of our national history; part of our culture! Its a miracle that these discs have lasted this long. We've got to preserve this stuff!'
NBC President Jay Leno (consisting of head in jar): 'Who is this Conan guy, and why should I care?'