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June 30, 2005
Home Taping Saves Shared Culture
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CPTech's Michelle Childs brings news of a BBC documentary called "Time Shift: Missing, Believed Wiped" that reveals how copyright-infringing home-tapers helped save a part of British cultural history. Explains Childs on the A2k list:
[The documentary] told the story of the beginning of TV in the UK. As tapes were expensive but content was then thought to be cheap, large numbers of now historically relevant programming was erased so they could reuse the tape. The BFI and the BBC then woke up to their loss and set up a public appeal called Treasure Hunt where they asked collectors (i.e., people who either copied thmeselves or purchased from others) to hand over copies. This has been a great success, with the BBC finding many missing programmes. However, the BBC does not pay the collectors, as what they orginally did was a breach of copyright, but do let them hang out at the BBC archive and choose a copy of something they want. Some collectors are annoyed about this, as the BBC then puts some of these clips onto DVDs and sells them.
It's interesting to note that even a national public service broadcaster could not be the sole documenter of even its own history, and it was the choice of the people who watched to record for personal use certain programming that ensured its survival.
One of the unexpected side-benefits of copyright's (traditionally) "leaky boat" -- you've got a bit of help when you need a bail-out.
Comments (2)
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1. Our music saved through illegal taping on July 1, 2005 8:50 AM writes...
My father was a rather good composer (http://www.gvenegas.com). After he passed away in 1993 we have discovered many (possibly over 100) of his great songs because music collectors had tapes of them. The collectors had made (and exchanged among themselves) cassette recordings of old 78 and 33 rpm records which are mosly not currently available in CD format.
Almost all the recordings were originally made by record companies that no longer exists.
It is fortunate that the music collectors make and exchange copies of old recordings.
Many of the songs we discovered have already been copyright registered by us heirs. The music collectors saved the music.
Sure, the taping of songs and their exchange among collectors may be technically illegal, but had it not ocurred, the songs would have been lost forever and we would not have any copyrights at all for these collector saved songs.
Surely as copyright owners of our father's music we could feel threatened by p2p and cd burning, but we must ask ourselves, what is more important, profiting from our father's music or saving the music? Clearly the latter is more important.
My thanks to the Puerto Rico Music Collector Society. These people, who are labeled as thiefs by the cartels, are heroes that ae saving the music of Puerto Rico, that of my father and that of many other composers and performers.
Permalink to Comment2. mbsfrg on July 4, 2005 4:27 AM writes...
I watched this documentary (it's a repeat from last year) and it's very good.
Whis is why it's very important to keep private non-commercial copying legal. The original broadcasters often do not care for the programmes when they are on the air. The people who watch them do.
This documentary will be re-run a few times on BBC Four. Catch it, if you can.
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