Slashdot Mirror
First Few Doctor Who Episodes May Fall To Public Domain Next Year
First time accepted submitter wmr89502270 writes "Doctor Who is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The special The Day of The Doctor will be broadcast simultaneously in over 75 countries and hundreds of cinemas in the UK. Across the world the hotly anticipated special episode will be screened simultaneously in full 3D. According to Copyright law of the United Kingdom, the copyright in a broadcast program expires 50 years from the end of the year in which it is broadcast, which means the first episodes will fall to public domain next year."
It probably won't hit PD in America until 3025. Like any other cultural work.
Thank you BBC beancounters. Thrifty today is costly tomorrow.
The MPAA and the RIAA must be absolutely scared shitless about the logistics of having to police the galaxy up to 55 light years to make certain that "I love Lucy" is not being pirated. At least the Brits only have to police less than 1875 star systems for pirates. Man those aliens must be really happy out past 50 years that they are finally going to be able to record DR WHO! They must be wonder when they will be able to digitize Gun Smoke and Bonanza but that might not happen in their life times.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Namely, destruction of all extant copies.
BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The music, script and everything else will still be under copyright, and those rights are required to make a copy of the show.
What you _might_ be able to do is make a derivative work of the audio+video in the episode.
the mouse will just make it so there is no time out and give you same time that you get for trying get into an bank vault if you dare to try to put some thing that the mouse said it's time to put in there vault just to come out again at full price years later.
or will they still get a copyright takedown notice on youtube?
Namely, destruction of all extant copies.
BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.
Actually, "wiping" was a rather common practice for every broadcaster back then. Tape was expensive, etc.
You said it, Time Cube Guy.
The missing episodes don't start until a few serials in. There are decent quality copies of all of the first three serials floating around. Almost all of the Second Doctor Patrick Troughton episodes are missing though. A few of the key ones are intact--"The Tomb of the Cybermen" and "The War Games" for example--but for the most part his entire run is gone.
If only we had a way to go back and keep this happening, by using some sort of "time machine"...
... the Mouse will buy a range-extender for the underpowered copyright.... What? England??? Ohhhhh, so sorry. It will be the BBC who buys (with the money they get from their victims) the copyright extension so they can exort even longer for the stuff the License-Payer allready paid...
To be honest, I think I can go the rest of my life without seeing The Aztecs or Land of the Giants again. On the other hand, I'd pay real money to see The War Machines.
People ask me why I work with emulators like MAME and MESS, and I cite examples much like this one. It often ends up being that it is the fans, years or decades later, that are the ones who end up preserving a company's works and content, rather than the company itself. There have been several real cases, at least as far as arcade games are concerned, of major manufacturers like Sega and Taito releasing retro arcade packs that are only possible because emulators like MAME have created an incentive for massively redundant preservation of these companies' works.
Similarly, things like early episodes of Doctor Who are only preserved because of the few enthusiasts who have doggedly insisted on keeping archives of things for years, if not decades. There were countless people who worked on these games, movies, TV episodes, what-have-you, and yet their works are otherwise doomed to the bit bucket of history with people who, ironically, care about a given IP more than the company that gave rise to it. I don't see any good solution to this problem, but it's heartening to know that even now people are still uncovering long-lost episodes of television shows and movies.
I think that guy smoked a bunch of "herb" then had a few beers before deciding to get on the Internet.
Translation from drunk stoner who can't seem to use grammar: "Disney keeps extending Copyright in the US so that they can keep taking movies out of circulation and put them in the so called 'Disney Vault', taking it off the market and exploiting Copyright which prevents anyone else from legally fulfilling the demand allows for demand to build up artificially so they can then start selling the mothballed movies again at full price in 're-release'".
Interestingly, when the "junking" of old Dr.Who episodes stopped in 1978, both the stories you cite ("Tomb" and "War Games") were either missing completely or the majority of episodes had gone; obviously they have since been recovered (the missing "War Games" episodes from the British Film Institute in 1979 and "Tomb of the Cybermen" from Hong Kong in 1991.)
My web domain.
can't they apply for an extension? Pretty sure I've seen this happen for other shows, possibly from disney?
Not only that but that old tape was VERY temperamental about how much climate and humidity it would tolerate so had to be kept in...well practically a vault with strict climate control which is why so many shows from the 40s-60s were lost both in the USA and the UK, the cost to keep early tape in playable condition was just insane.
Also you have the fact that as TVs switched to color most folks really didn't seem interested in watching some old B&W show, they all wanted color to enjoy on their new sets which made corps like the BBC figure that B&W shows would never be worth a nickel and when you figure in the insane costs of storing the film and the cost of the films themselves? not really surprising that they didn't keep them.
Finally as for copyrights? I believe until We,The People have a seat at the table they should be looked at as what they are, unjust laws bought by bribes and like all unjust laws should be ignored as much as possible. What we have in america does NOT fit either into the framework the founders wrote nor any idea of a "reasonable time", no what we have is Valenti's "forever minus a single day" because every time it looks like that fucking mouse will end up in PD Disney will bribe the politicians for another stay. this is why if you want to pirate something? Please by all means pirate Disney, don't give those bribing bastards a single cent of your money. I mean how fucked up is it that Walt has been dead longer than many here have been alive and many of his first works, made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, is STILL under copyright?
Until copyrights actually have limits again we,the People should simply ignore them, they no longer serve their intended purpose and now merely enrich a few old white guys that lock more and more of a culture behind a paywall.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Also, don't forget that the Actors and Musicians union limited the number of repeats that could be shown in any given year; nowadays it seems to be mostly repeats with a few new programmes thrown in to the schedules occasionally.
The Union members hated repeats as their members didn't get paid as much compared to first-run broadcasts. So effectively, the TV broadcasters were accumulating large amounts of material that they couldn't reshow.
My web domain.
You don't see any solution? How about shorter copyright terms so people can redistribute the works instead of needing to privately hoard them for 95 years.
Also, don't forget they had a fire which burnt many archive copies of shows, not just Dr Who.
should read "elevated to public domain"
50 years... in which time frame?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
On the other hand, there is a ton of television content from the 40s, 50s, and 60s which is available in full. Dick Van Dyke Show, Honeymooners, Andy Griffith, and so on.
Most episodes were also on 16 mm film. Unfortunately if they were not on modern safety film the temperamentality of old reel was like the one of a dynamite candle. When affordable VCR were available everybody started to telecine the fire liability with images on that they had on storage. Some episodes of doctor who were destroyed because the master 16 mm reels were marked wrongly as telecined and sent to recycle factory.
Buy jeans in thailand and ship them to the UK to sell? Grey imports are piracy!!!
They will do you for copyright infringement even if you get it from the UK by arguing that you had to make a local copy to store it in the USA, so you'd have to go to the UK and copy it to a medium that is then set to read only and NEVER COPIED AGAIN.
And then they'd say they are suspicious that you are importing with intent to break the law and stop you anyway.
They never, NEVER, intended to hold up their side of the copyright bargain.
SO WHY THE FUCK DID THEY GET COPYRIGHTS???
If I borrow money with never any intent to pay it back, I can be done for fraud.
If they knew they would routinely destroy the only legal copies, why the hell do they get copyrights when they were only going to allow the benefits, not the cost?
The problem was Elvis.
The *AAssholes proclaimed The End Of The World when Elvis came out of copyright in the UK.
No such thing happened and they were shown up to be wrong.
To prevent this happening again, they insisted that copyrights be extended for other works.
AFAIK all the Jon Pertwee episodes exist, but not all of them exist in colour. In these cases, the Quad tapes were erased but the 16mm B/W copies for export survived. Some of them exist in colour but derived from low-quality copies (IIRC they managed to digitally marry the chroma signal from a Umatic copy of the NTSC conversion with the higher-res 16mm print to improve the quality).
A couple of years back someone devised a way of partially reconstructing the colour signal by digitally decoding the RGB triads on a high-res scan of the print, so the B/W-only episodes may yet be colourised.
NOT.
Seriously America, get your shit together.
Episodes from Tom Baker's era onwards exist in their entirety. The catalogue of stories from before this is rather patchy, and I've put a list of what exists and what doesn't on my website (though you'll need to make sure Javascript is running to see the what the key of icons represents.)
There is the Tom Baker episode Shada which wasn't completed as opposed to being wiped.
Namely, destruction of all extant copies.
BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.
I think you're being funny, but for the benefit of those who have modded you 'informative'... it's absurd that this was an intentional avoidance of copyright. The BBC have been putting an inordinate amount of effort into recovering the lost material.
Only ten more years, it'll also be in the public domain
The first serial (An Unearthly Child) survives and has been restored into pretty good condition. The second serial (The Daleks), also survives. The fourth serial (Marco Polo) is missing some episodes, and so are several of the later ones. Most of season 3 is lost (including all of four of the seven serials and most of several of them, such as The Daleks' Master Plan) and so are some important bits of Season 4 (including most of the last episode, when the first Doctor dies).
It's a very good argument for shorter copyright, as copyright holders apparently can't be trusted to ensure that our cultural legacy survives.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Some of the older material for shows of this era is preserved on cellulose. Unfortunately, as it ages, it becomes a lot more reactive until it will spontaneously ignite on contact with air. I spoke to someone from the BBC archives a few years ago and they have some warehouses with rolls of cellulose in barrels of oil (so that they won't come into contact with any oxygen). Each of these barrels is under a hopper of sand so that, if it does ignite, it can be extinguished before it spreads (a warehouse full of oil is not exactly a safe environment for fires). They're waiting for restoration techniques to improve before they can extract much of it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In the U.S., it's a max of 28 years (14 years + 14 years if renewed).
When Doctor Who was first broadcast, nobody knew that one day it would be part of our cultural legacy.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
When *anything* is broadcast, nobody can be sure whether one day it will be part of our cultural legacy. Even when there's a time machine in it.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
If only we had a way to go back and keep this happening, by using some sort of "time machine"...
Oh but maybe we will go back and cause(d) it to happen...
No, this is not true, sorry. There was no fire at the storage facilities. People use this as an excuse for the BBC's dire archival status, but the only "fire" was in the furnaces that the BBC utilised and into which episodes of many TV shows were thrown.
My web domain.
Why not, actually?
I mean, it's an equilibrium between the rights of the work's creator and the rights of the people: the people must forego their right to what has been added to their culture for a limited time, during which time the creator's income from distributing copies of the work is protected by the government.
After this period of time, the deal is that the people can freely distribute copies of that work of art. It probably works differently for e.g. sculptures than songs, but what's wrong with the following idea:
(*) If the work's creator doesn't cough up the work after having bought one or two extensions, sue them for ..... TADAA...
THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
(I've been looking forward to using that expression in a context where it actually makes sense). For indeed, if you have a contract with your culture to enrich it with your work after profiting from it yourself for a time, and after that time you or your descendants don't live up to your end of the bargain, then you have indeed *stolen* intellectual property from its rightful owners, the society that nurtured your creativity.
I'd like to add that there should be no penalties if the creator didn't buy an extension and lost their source code in a harddisk crash; let that 14 year copyright extension be a signal that the work is of commercial value.
What do you think? (Especially if you're Rufus Pollock)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Yes the US archival situation is a lot better than the UK one. One reason is that multiple copies of TV shows were made so that they could be shown across the states in multiple time zones and with more copies, there's more chance of something having survived.
My web domain.
Yes, you're right and this is why the weblink I gave above is a kaleidoscope of colours for all the different formats between 1970 and 1974; fortunately all those episodes are now in colour to varying qualities. The "Chroma Dot/Colour Recovery" process of which you speak has been used on 12 episodes of Dr.Who with varying degrees of success, and two non-Dr.Who episodes. But, in a nutshell, the Jon Pertwee now exists in colour in its entirety.
My web domain.
From 1993 onwards there has been a British Film Institute Initiative to recover lost British TV. Its called "Missing Believed Wiped." I attended the first two of these and we were told that anything - brief clips, audio recordings, cine film taken from a TV set, domestic VCR/VTR material etc. was of interest. But I know of a few cases where audio material was offered up and there was no interest. One BBC Engineer was given a lost Harry Worth TV episode and he kept it in his locker for the better part of a year before giving it to the archives.
And then there is the matter of the wiped children's shows. You might think these don't count; only vid kid after all? But people have fond memories of some of those TV shows and were horrified to discover that the BBC Archivist had decided on his own back in 1993 to wipe many episodes so that the 2 inch tape could be sold to countries that used this obsolete format (Australia, being one I believe). Some of those shows only exist because commercial copies had been made for overseas sales, but the original tapes are now gone. When the BBC wanted to put together a tribute night to one of the people involved in one of those kids shows, they were horrified to find that a lot of stuff had been erased. And the BBC Archivist kept his job. At the same time as he was doing this, he was on the podium at "Missing Believed Wiped" telling the audience that the BBC were interested in lost material. Oh, the irony. Oh, the hypocrisy.
My web domain.
Any form of entertainment that is enjoyed by a nontrivial proportion of the population is part of our cultural legacy. It's only later that you can tell how important a part it is.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
https://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/6725378/Complete_Original_Doctor_Who
https://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/6715960/Doctor_Who_2005-2011_Complete
Going to need to find 2012-, but they are all there on TPB also.
Remember, if you like Doctor Who, support it in some way.
Be seeing you...
Yes, you're right and this is why the weblink I gave above is a kaleidoscope of colours for all the different formats between 1970 and 1974; fortunately all those episodes are now in colour to varying qualities. The "Chroma Dot/Colour Recovery" process of which you speak has been used on 12 episodes of Dr.Who with varying degrees of success, and two non-Dr.Who episodes. But, in a nutshell, the Jon Pertwee now exists in colour in its entirety.
Ah yes, I knew I'd forgotten something - checking that link out. Thanks, it was well worth reading. I particularly liked how the NTSC icon was washed out compare to the PAL one...
in 3.. 2.. 1...
The UK laws granted a sole case of perpetual rights to 'Peter Pan', which J.M.Barrie had given to the Great Ormond Children's hospital. This isn't quite copyright that 'never grows up' ( see http://www.gosh.org/gen/peterpan/copyright/faq ), but it comes pretty close. I think the UK legislation could be a bit flexible to a time traveller too.
They made the right call at the time, given that the alternative to was to archive every tape and stack up a nontrivial fraction of the BBC's budget in a vault in preparation for applications that didn't exist.
Most media go through a period where the recording format is too valuable not to reuse (magnetic tape) or too fragile to store (nitrocellulose film, early print). Some day maybe we'll invent a way to record brain patterns, but I'm inclined to expect it'll be in a medium like defect-free carbon-hassium nanocrystals that cost $500,000 each. I don't doubt that some re-recording in whatever technology we come up with.
NASA recorded over the Moon Landing masters, at a time when they were better-funded than they have ever been. The BBC is in good company.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I know technology has improved a huge amount since then, but some of the 1970s/80s PAL to NTSC conversions were awful. Reds looked pink, blues looked turquoise and so on. So my little icon was a subtle "dig" at that ;-)
My web domain.
Well, yes, but does that count ;-) ? Whatever was completed before the strike dug its talons in has been preserved.
My web domain.
Not only that but that old tape was VERY temperamental about how much climate and humidity it would tolerate so had to be kept in...well practically a vault with strict climate control which is why so many shows from the 40s-60s were lost both in the USA and the UK, the cost to keep early tape in playable condition was just insane.
Or you can just put it in a salt mine, done and done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's a clever point. I hadn't even thought about that.
If anything its better with shows from the 50s-60s, because video tape recording wasn't yet viable for production. Shows were still produced and edited with film and had a durable master copy. Most of the archival losses came from the 70s when many shows were recorded direct to video tape and later lost to wiping. Its a lot easier to erase a video tape.
I think it should be 'rise into the public domain'.
Video tape was used a lot in the 1960s and I suspect the 1950s. But it had the advantage that it could be wiped and reused.
My web domain.
Just when I thought it was safe (at 65+) to come out from behind the sofa...
Only in the UK. Come to the U.S. if you want to live forever.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
>
>Only ten more years, it'll also be in the public domain
>
Want to make a wager on this? So far the mouse has managed to extend its copyright
everytime it is about to expire.
It's unfortunate that the BBC were so shortsighted and "recycled" the master tapes of so many great series. Of course, everyone knows the famous Monty Python story of how that series was almost lost too, but was saved by Terry Gilliam (who basically stole the tapes and put them in his attic). But very few series from that era were so lucky.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It was more like televising a play, so they wanted to have repeat performances they could get paid for.
So, unions, pro:
- Reduced hours
- Increased pay
- Longer vacations
- Safer conditions
- Earlier retirement
Cons:
- Lost a bunch of Doctor Whos due to greed
THEY STILL FUCKING OWE US!!! >:-(
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Most media go through a period where the recording format is too valuable not to reuse (magnetic tape) or too fragile to store (nitrocellulose film, early print). Some day maybe we'll invent a way to record brain patterns, but I'm inclined to expect it'll be in a medium like defect-free carbon-hassium nanocrystals that cost $500,000 each. I don't doubt that some re-recording in whatever technology we come up with.
And very probably, religious organisation will be up in arms to pass law that make "Soul-dubbing" restricted and regulated, and make "home soul-dubbing" completely and utterly illegal.
So even if huge medical megacorp can't afford to keep brain-dump of absolutely everybody, just in case they turn to be important and influent scientists down the line, you won't be able to count on amateur "brainophile" to have recorded a brain dump of an important person and to have spread backups around.
You can't even count on chance to help you.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's unfortunate that the BBC were so shortsighted and "recycled" the master tapes of so many great series. Of course, everyone knows the famous Monty Python story of how that series was almost lost too, but was saved by Terry Gilliam (who basically stole the tapes and put them in his attic). But very few series from that era were so lucky.
I did not know that, though I've often wondered why they survived when so much else was lost. Also, "stealing the tapes" is not exactly a trivial exercise - the original Quad tapes were massive - 2" wide, 10.5" diameter and about 5KG each. If they had 2 episodes each, that's about 22 tapes he'd have had to sneak out of the archives. Not exactly something you can fit in your pocket...
The third season won't come out of copyright until 2015-2016. But if anybody would like to publish Marco Polo, now's the time.
This year, There was a pernicious rumor that a bunch of Hartnells had been found in Africa. Suppose that was true. What would be the copyright status of any restoration of. those works?
Technically, Marco Polo, Keys of Marinus, Sensorites, Aztecs, an Reign of Teror are all 1964 serials, though.
if i recall correctly, a couple years ago, the studio warehouse that had all the old episodes burned down. i think the only people with access to the old episodes are the ones who bought the limited edition copies back then
Oh, one of the more fun stories about the BBC junking master tapes was when they decided to get rid of a lot of audio masters during the 80's. Owing to the bureaucracy involved, the archivist (Mark Ayres) went through the paper trail and discovered that they had been moved into a spare room to be skipped, but then the process had been interrupted and the tapes were all still sitting there a decade or so later. (From the 'Alchemists of Sound' documentary)
Yet another advantage we Americans had, there was an abundance of film cameras from the studios (remember that poverty row died out in the early 50s, flooding the market with cheap film cameras of movie quality) and of course with Hollywood being here and using so much film I have no doubt the price of film was cheaper here as well. Since film can't be reused and we had no rules limiting rebroadcast a lot more survived because it could be used to fill air time in the off hours, weekend mornings, late night, etc.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Fall to public domain" makes it seem like some kind of failure. Wouldn't they really be "released to public domain", more like getting out of copyright prison?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
He had inside help from an unnamed source (the same guy who warned him that they were about to be recycled).
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
One of the saddest loses was almost the entirety of the groundbreaking Dudley Moore/Peter Cook series Not Only...But Also. Only a few episodes survive today.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I think Peter Cook says in his autobiography that when he found out that the series was going to junked, he tried to buy copies but the BBC refused. The singer Sandy (sp?) Shaw also tried to buy copies of her stuff but the BBC spitefully destroyed her stuff anyway. From what I've read, they went out their way to junk her recordings as soon as she made inquiries.
My web domain.
More than that. A lot of Very Important Things are still culturally inspired by short, very obscure works.
Half the science fiction films of the last few decades are based upon pulp stories that would have been entirely forgotten had some screenwriter not come across them and realised those ideas could be huge if just fleshed out a little and given a movie and promotion.
I traveled into the future (4022, just to make sure) and got all the episodes which were in the public domain (they stopped making episodes in 2052, so the International Paraguayan Conference Copyrights (IPCC) had just expired. I would have gotten the Disney stuff too, except they moved their headquarters to Titan, so their works are not subject to the IPCC limits).
Just one problem, the episodes have been converted to Ultra-Definition-Holograms (UDH) and I forgot to bring back a player.
Things don't get any better in the future.
Marco Polo is not missing "some episodes". All episodes of Marco Polo are missing. Judging from the quality of the script, the critical reviews, and the extant production stills, this is probably the greatest "missing" Doctor Who story. You whipper snappers, get your Doctor Who stuff right.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
I've always gathered that the BBC must be a very strange place to work. They seem to act like some kind of weird fraternity/family--tough to get into, incestuous to an extreme (just look at how they've developed so many in-house actors/crew who just float from one BBC show to the next), spiteful/petty as shit if you turn your backs on them or attempt to leave, and insular to all outsiders. Not sure if it's still that way today, but it certainly seemed to be at one time.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
NASA recorded over the Moon Landing masters, at a time when they were better-funded than they have ever been. The BBC is in good company.
Now *that* was a gross failure if ever I saw one.
Quick background; NASA used a custom "slow scan" transmission system to send TV pictures from the moon, but those weren't compatible with ordinary TV transmissions, so they had to be converted for live transmission for viewers at home. Conversion technology was basic at the time, so the method was basically to point a camera at a monitor displaying the slow scan pictures.
That was fine. Not fine as in "good quality", because they probably lost quite a lot of the original quality, but fine as in I appreciate that was the best *live* on-the-fly conversion they could probably have managed in those days.
What *wasn't* remotely "fine" was that they didn't keep- or at least properly archive- a recording of the original, pre-conversion transmissions. If we had those today, we would easily have much higher quality footage of the moon landing transmissions that could easily be converted to a viewable resolution and framerate using digital technology. But we don't; all we have are the converted-on-the-fly versions. They've remastered those- but let's face it, that's still a piss-poor alternative to actually having the originals.
I don't think that had *anything* to do with money; I think it was a major institutional failure. And unlike something that- at the time- was seen as a low budget family scifi show- these were transmissions of *the first bloody moon landing* and they knew damn well they were important, even then.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The BBC isn't alone no, but the policy was still a flawed one promulgated by the bean counters who saw the immediate cost savings, but dismissed the loss in the future, if they even considered it.
Which I doubt.
To be fair, there were other interests that didn't want repeat programming, as they thought it would cost them more work, but that's a different problem.
That's a rather unfair characterization. From what I've read, the culture of TV broadcasting was very different back then. They taped over the old stuff because they didn't think anybody would really care. It was company policy.
Call me naive, but I don't think it had anything to do with copyright.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Money talks, bribes sweeten deals... and at the last moment a copyright extension act will be rushed through. It happened before with "Cliff's Act". I should get a couple dozen eggs and let them rot away just in case "Sir" Cliff (the Public Domain's #1 Enemy) dares to show his face around these parts.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Like he said!
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
"First Few Doctor Who Episodes May Fall To Public Domain Next Year"
I cannot even begin to comprehend the depression behind this sentence. The law states clearly that these episodes will enter the public domain. This seems as deterministic as the law gets. The only alternative would be a very sudden move by the lawmakers, right now. Since there's no real gossip about such a plan, this means that whoever wrote the title deeply believes that lobbyists will enter soon and be fast and effective.
Come on, guys! This is not America! European lawmakers can obviously be bought, but not that easily and quickly - the voters are not yet completely asleep (vide ACTA). Have you so completely lost hope in humanity, not just your corrupt politicians?
BTW: check who holds the copyright and their track record. It might not be stellar, but it certainly is not as bad as MPAA's...
I'd give it -3 overrated. And this thread has been interesting - I have learnt a few things about this that I wasn't quite aware of - such as the actor's guild conditions that prevented the recordings continued use, and so contributed to their destruction. I was aware of the official programs to recover missing copies, but am not surprised at BigBadBus' notes below about archivists lack of concern for the official programs.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
...that the BBC is fully aware of this, and is planning a special new series dedicated to re-running all of those "old episodes"....thus keeping the public domain thing from happening.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It's a very good argument for shorter copyright, as copyright holders apparently can't be trusted to ensure that our cultural legacy survives.
While I love to see good arguments for shorter commercial copyright, it's not clear that even this would provide protection for situations like this. It's taken significant fan efforts, for example, to keep some software programs alive that are less than 20 years old. Even then, all they have is the binaries, not the source code. There's all kinds of commercial software running in obscure corners of research labs for which the original provider, and the source code, is long gone.
Another possibility would be to require copies of commercial works to be given to the care of a neutral third party, which would contract to keep the work available and to release the work after a period of time, in return for the privilege of receiving legal protection for the work. Sort of like the function the Library of Congress used to perform in the USA, but without as much government involvement.
A requirement to provide well documented source code in the repository could be included for software (with a rule that it be build-able to the exact binaries released) .
A certain amount of money could also be required to be held aside, as another condition for receiving protection, thus forcing some of the profits or potential profits for the work to not be available until after the work was put in the public domain, as an incentive to get things right. This might help encourage long term thinking in the business world, something that seems quite lacking at present.
Don't forget Sonny Bono.
I used to be
The BBC did NOT erase tapes to 'recycle' them - that is a MUCH later lie sold to particular thick sheeple with no faculty for critical thinking. The BBC actually erased them to prevent them from EVER being shown again- this obvious and simplest explanation is the correct one (as it tends to be).
Sheeple have the memory of a goldfish. Intelligent people RECALL history. The great erasing occurred BEFORE the concept of earning via VHS rentals etc. The great erasing occurred at the height of politics over broadcasting in the UK. The BBC was in the hands of government stooges (as always).
-Massive pressure was mounting to move away from BBC producing all its own output to the use of independent production companies that might also produce content for commercial channels as well.
-The rights of performers to re-earn from repeats of TV shows was a VERY sensitive and contentious issue.
-Entertainment unions were at the height of their powers, and were dead set against the re-broadcast of old programming.
The BBC took the clear stand of erasing most of its archived programming to meet political and union pressure. The unedited past is consider a VERY dangerous land for the sheeple to visit (look to 1984 for answers). The politicians of the time were far more concerned with ensuring the BBC deleted historical records of the 1960s, so that 'official' history could not be challenged with inconvenient recorded truths.
The unions got their proof-positive that the BBC was committed to to only broadcasting new material (the UK never had the habit of lesser channels showing endless repeats- Doctor Who was rarely shown even twice- the exception being one selected story each year shown in one continuous run at Christmas.
Of course, in later years when VHS, then DVD, then digital downloads became commonplace, and after Unions had negotiated nice 'new format' payments for their members, the great erasing is seen as the sickening evil that us non-sheeple recognised it was at the time. Never forget that a politician is the very definition of a Human who will do ANYTHING for short-term gain. The BBC is always in the hands of such scumbags.
The BBC erased almost its entire archive in one giant 'bonfire of the vanities'. So you cretins think this was somehow related to a need to recycle tape? You thick-as-sh*t morons thick that after creating and holding material in an archive for 15+ years, the BBC suddenly said one day "hey, we could be using that tape, most of which is in formats we haven't used for years, to record new programs on"? Good god, does the average sheeple deserve its fate.
Since I recall the great erasing, and the ACTUAL excuses given at the time, I can promise you the "tape reuse" bullshit was an idea invented by certain thicko sheeple themselves long after the event. As Unions were being crushed in the UK, and society was being radically changed from the 60s concept, the power-that-be liked the BBC's historical record of the past less and less. Even the ideas expressed in episodes of drama like the 1960s 'Doctor Who' were considered dangerously subversive.
The sheeple must live in the now. The sheeple must ONLY have values and ideas given to them via the mass media in the last couple of years or so.
So the BBC explained that it was a waste of money maintaining the archive. Britain had almost ZERO broadcast TV channels at the time, and the idea of 'repeats' (re-runs for you Yanks), let alone repeats of black-and-white shows, was something the mainstream media was always bashing TV over. Meanwhile, the BBC was engaged in pleasing the Unions that represented BBC workers. Under (then) current rules, repeats gave almost no payment to most people that had previously worked on a TV show. The BBC promised the unions to repeat the most popular shows no more than THREE times, after which the recording might as well not exist.
This, of course, was just before the days of VHS rentals in the UK, although industry experts KNEW that home recording was about to become a massive trend- let no-one tell you otherwise. That home recording would lead to home rental, and profitable new contracts for members of TV unions was a little less obvious.
Did the BBC recycle tapes. Of course, but NEVER from archives. Some shows were made to be broadcast once or twice, and NOT placed in the archive. These shows were erased within a year or so, with a few choice episodes only placed in the archive for future use. Doctor Who, like all BBC's expensive and world selling drama, WAS entirely archived, and NEVER subject to a tape-recycle policy. You would have to be the world's biggest idiot to think an organisation would spend millions (in today's money) to make a drama, only to throw that money down the drain in order to possibly re-use tens-of-pounds worth of tape - and that is if you ignore the fact that reused tape gave a much crappier image quality back then.
God, you sheeple will believe anything.
It's worth noting that much of the cost in archiving the episodes came from the increasingly large fees the BBC would have had to pay to the various production people involved. During the 70s there was a big scare about home taping TV (the chief person at the MPAA famously telling Congress that the home tape player was to the TV industry what the "Boston stranger was to the woman home alone" or something similar) - the fear was that if people could have stuff on tape they wouldn't have to buy anything new, and if broadcasters (like the BBC) could store episodes of TV shows for decades, they would stop commissioning new works and just show endless repeats.
The UK TV industry's way out was to force the broadcasters to sign contracts agreeing to pay "storage" fees for each year they kept the films, and these increased over time. So eventually the BBC decided it was prohibitively expensive to keep them...
Of course, as pointed out elsewhere, the episodes aren't actually out of copyright - only the broadcast copyrights are about to expire. As the director of the first Doctor Who episode is still alive, it will be at least 70 years (barring reform to copyright law) until the film itself is out of copyright.
After some digging, the first episode to definitely come out of copyright may be The Smugglers (s4e1), in 2068. Possibly The Time Meddler (s2e9) in 2057 or The Aztecs (s1e6) in 2065. Copyright is complicated.
Prior to the invention and popular adoption of the home video cassette recorder, just how do you imagine anyone might have retained a personal copy of these episodes? If illegally distributed home recordings existed, they would have been embraced by the BBC by now. As it happens there are some home recordings of the audio available for almost every episode that was ever broadcast. Copyright did not prevent this, and the recordings have been made legally available to buy, in the absence of any better option.