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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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"...
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.)
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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.
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.
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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?
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.
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