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Haystack Situation Looking Worse And Worse: Why Did The State Dept. Endorse This Mess?
The Legality Of News Aggregators

Film Archives Being Eaten Away; Would Be Nice If People Could Make Copies To Preserve

Movie Industry

from the but-would-that-be-'theft'? dept

Tue, Sep 14th 2010 9:44pm — Mike Masnick
Sneeje points us to a recent BBC article about how many old films are being literally eaten up by fungus, such that important elements of our history are being deleted via the "archival" process. Of course, if this content was digitized and allowed to be shared, this wouldn't be a problem, as there would be more and more copies available, rather than relying on a single point of failure made up of film with a gel coating that happens to be "ideal food for fungi like Aspergillus and Penicillium."

Filed Under: film, fungi

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  1. identicon
    MrWilson, 14 Sep 2010 @ 10:01pm

    Re:

    It would be one thing if it were only a matter of money. The rights to some films are wrapped up in (overly)complicated contract clauses.

    It's why Netflix can't stream some older movies. For instance, Michael Jackson's estate owns some Beatles music and if those songs are played in a movie, the estate gets to demand a separate fee on top of what Netflix pays to the studio. If a rights holder doesn't want a movie containing their song to be licensed for streaming video, they can block it altogether.

    Yet another reason why copyright needs to expire within 15 years (or less in the digital era).

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