Museum Collection Of Historical TV Culture At Risk Due To Copyright Takedowns
from the can't-allow-history-to-be-preserved dept
Although copyright is mainly thought of as concerning books, music and films, it applies to other kinds of creativity in a fixed form. That includes apparently trivial material such as early commercial television programs. These are important cultural artefacts, but unlike books, music or films, there are very few formal schemes for collecting and conserving them. This has led to members of the public undertaking the preservation of TV programs on an ad hoc, unofficial basis. It’s great that they are doing so, but the informal nature of their collections means that they are exposed to serious threats from copyright, as the recent experience of The Museum of Classic Chicago Television makes clear. The Museum explains why it exists:
The Museum of Classic Chicago Television (FuzzyMemoriesTV) is constantly searching out vintage material on old videotapes saved in basements or attics, or sold at flea markets, garage sales, estate sales and everywhere in between. Some of it would be completely lost to history if it were not for our efforts. The local TV stations have, for the most part, regrettably done a poor job at preserving their history. Tapes were very expensive 25-30 years ago and there also was a lack of vision on the importance of preserving this material back then. If the material does not exist on a studio master tape, what is to be done? Do we simply disregard the thousands of off-air recordings that still exist holding precious “lost” material? We believe this would be a tragic mistake.
Dozens of TV professionals and private individuals have donated to the museum their personal copies of old TV programmes made in the 1970s and 1980s, many of which include rare and otherwise unavailable TV advertisements that were shown as part of the broadcasts. In addition to the main Museum of Classic Chicago Television site, there is also a YouTube channel with videos. However, as TorrentFreak recounts, the entire channel was under threat because of copyright takedown requests:
In a series of emails starting Friday and continuing over the weekend, [the museum’s president and lead curator] Klein began by explaining his team’s predicament, one that TorrentFreak has heard time and again over the past few years. Acting on behalf of a copyright owner, in this case Sony, India-based anti-piracy company Markscan hit the MCCTv channel with a flurry of copyright claims. If these cannot be resolved, the entire project may disappear.
One issue is that Klein was unable to contact Markscan to resolve the problem directly. He is quoted by TorrentFreak as saying: “I just need to reach a live human being to try to resolve this without copyright strikes. I am willing to remove the material manually to get the strikes reversed.”
Once the copyright enforcement machine is engaged, it can be hard to stop. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) recounts, there are effectively no penalties for unreasonable or even outright false claims. The playing field is tipped entirely in the favour of the copyright world, and anyone that is targeted using one of the takedown mechanisms is unlikely to be able to do much to contest them, unless they have good lawyers and deep pockets. Fortunately, in this case, an Ars Technica article on the issue reported that:
Sony’s copyright office emailed Klein after this article was published, saying it would “inform MarkScan to request retractions for the notices issued in response to the 27 full-length episode postings of Bewitched” in exchange for “assurances from you that you or the Fuzzy Memories TV Channel will not post or re-post any infringing versions from Bewitched or other content owned or distributed by SPE [Sony Pictures Entertainment] companies.”
That “concession” by Sony highlights the main problem here: the fact that a group of public-spirited individuals trying to preserve unique digital artefacts must live with the constant threat of copyright companies taking action against them. Moreover, there is also the likelihood that some of their holdings will have to be deleted as a result of those legal threats, despite the material’s possible cultural value or the fact that it is the only surviving copy. No one wins in this situation, but the purity of copyright must be preserved at all costs, it seems.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon. Originally posted to WalledCulture.
Filed Under: copyright, fuzzy memories tv, museums, preservation, takedowns
Companies: markscan, museum of classic chicago television, sony
Comments on “Museum Collection Of Historical TV Culture At Risk Due To Copyright Takedowns”
Content is owned by the rich. We should be lucky they don’t just send hit squads.
Can corporations just stop being evil pieces of shit?
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That’s like asking a scorpion if it can stop stinging people to death with its venom.
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Hey now!
Animals don’t have the capacity to reason, while these fuckers W9N’T reason with us plebs.
How the hell would anyone know what is owned by Sony (or whoever) now?
But that’s a feature: You’re supposed to err on the side of caution and preserve nothing. Meanwhile the “owners” end up preserving nothing as well.
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It’s a feature of the Berne Convention, which mandates that everything is ©’d once it’s fixed in a tangible form. If you want to go to the root of our current problem with © law, I think you should aim for the Berne Convention.
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It’s the exact opposite: the convention requires that copyright be automatic, even without a copyright symbol or notice. It’s a major problem, but not particularly relevant to anything Sony produces today (they’d never release without a notice).
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Yes, the roots of the problem are copyright law (Berne or homegrown) but taking those as given, it’s still crazy difficult in most cases to find out who the hell currently owns bits of old media. Even mofos claiming ownership can be at odds, andeven if they don’t care or really know among themselves, the sure as hell care about consumers and preservationists. And yeah, the other feature is that claims don’t even have to show standing unless they end up in court. Further exacerbated particularly with contemporary content in the realm of DMCA compliance at scale schemes and bad/malicious takedown notices. (Fun current examples here https://onlysky.media/jpearce/how-russia-is-waging-war-on-me/ with more BS takesowns against various YouTube channels.)
Re: Re: Re: the Funny think/thing
In the past 2-3 Vaults of the old movies and Such have BURNT. its all LOST.
the Big corps are NOT known for UPDATING TECH to newer formats to KEEP the Old stuff around forever.
Formats have a GREAT chance of degrading, being susceptible to Condition like Fire, water and ROT.
Be it from Old Film, New Film, CD/DVD/BR or ANY format Including metals. Be it a Old Analog, New Digital, Windows Media VBR, LOSSLESS of any form, they will ALL change to something Different. Go see if your Unzip works on Zip files from an Amiga or C64 old file format.(GOOD LUCK)
BBC decided to do a compilation of Doctor WHO. Found they were missing over 300 episodes.
They put a call out WORLD WIDE to TV stations and the public to see WHO still had recordings. I think they are Down to about 40-50 left. Found of 3 formats of VCR tapes mostly, that have been sitting around Since the 70’s and 80’s. After reformating and Cleanup of the Data it Works..Took about 10 years.
Who do you say thank you to? THE PUBLIC.
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The “cleanup” goes as far as colour recovery from monochromatic recordings of colour broadcasts. It seems crazy that someone figured out how to do that (it’s not colourisation; the actual colour subcarrier causes minor distortion on non-colour devices and can be reconstructed therefrom).
As for film fires, the oldest film was made from nitrocellulose, the first plastic invented. Nitrocellulose is also known as “flash paper” and “guncotton”, because it’s absurdly inflammable: for example, it can spontaneously ignite at room temperature, and can burn without any oxygen, even underwater.
But we don’t have to go back that far, or into actually-obscure films. One of the most popular films ever, Star Wars (1977), has only been recovered—in its original version and with quality comparable to film—in the last decade, by fans. See “Project 4K77” and “Team Negative 1”. Even then, they had to scrounge alternate video for some sections, and alternate audio because the source was a dub.
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There’s also the potential for multiple copyrights or owners: These posted episodes of Bewitched were actually from network film prints, and included the original ads and sponsor IDs (mostly for Quaker-owned products), plus other elements from the initial airings.
Any claim of copyright violation for media more than about five years old should require the “owner” to identify a legal channel that any consumer can access the offending content for a reasonable price. If they’ve abandoned the content by not making it available, or potentially no longer even possess a copy to distribute, the copyright should be forfeit. The idea of copyright is to enrich culture, if the content isn’t available to the masses it is not serving culture in any tangible way and therefore the copyright should be invalidated.
Since Sony owns the catalogs for Barry & Enright, Chuck Barris, Bob Stewart, and Merv Griffin, it has a particular notoriety among game-show fans.
Copyright, at this point, is the destruction of culture. Corporations want to create a world without memory, where media exists solely to be quickly consumed and immediately forgotten in favor of the next new product. The Disney Vault is their vision of the future.
I guess Sony and other rightsholders realized that if you’re going to scam, might as well outsource it to the experts.
Can we get some Kitboga or Pierogi in on this? Have their granny characters go after these “Ma’am okay I tell you do one thing why are you redeeming the gift cards” assholes.
Reading the comments on the Ars Technica article someone says a bunch of public domain channels and videos were taken down for no reason a few years ago, does anyone have any information on that because this is the first time I heard about that?
Deletion?
The last paragraph indicates that they may need to delete the content. The implication that it would be completely destroyed. I can understand (however don’t agree with) removing it from YouTube. However I read it as implied that all copies need to be destroyed (tapes, dvds, digital media etc). Who’s going to check if the archivist has kept some copies on external drives so the availability and be revisited later. Is that what they’re really asking for us complete destruction and not just keeping it from being publicly and readily available?
I used to listen to radio station air checks. Seems video/TV/Movies have to rlie on luck. Catalogues are so merged that I bet Evil Corp cannot wait to sell off car parts.
Hulu will be lost.
I hope this Museum gets protected.