“Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation said that basically half of all American films made before 1950 are lost, & none of the major distributors are looking for them. Even worse, they said that more than 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever.”
Private ownership of intellectual commodities, that is to say art, is a serious issue. Officially, copyright is a mechanism for the protection of art, but in practice it is often an obstacle and mechanism for its scarcity and eventual destruction. In the old days, this threat was mechanical, it was expensive and costly to store and share audio and visual media. The BBC junked many of its old shows, most infamously Doctor Who, because the storage space of flammable film reels was getting expensive.
But now that should largely be gone with multiple cheap and portable methods of recording and converting media and digitisation. But unfortunately, we're up against the stonewall of incredibly long term lengths. It doesn't matter if the film is literally rotting in the can, if it isn't 50, 70 or more years after the death of the individual most invested in preserving and sharing the object, the creator themselves, then legally speaking you can't take action. And those who do are at risk of extreme penalties.
To illustrate the problem, here's a film released in 1926, The Adventure of Prince Achmed
This is a stunning early work of animation, it is also incomplete. The video is a reconstruction based on what nitrate film remains. It's also an imperfect VHS rip, as that version only received a limited release in the 1990s. It's interesting and important and was quite popular at the time, directed by a famous German director at a booming time for the German film industry. I shudder to think of the fate that's befallen films with less impact or pedigree from the same period.
IP law as it is impeding film preservation. We live in a world where 90% of the film and TV market globally is controlled by a handful of giant studios, they have immense archives and back catalogues and practically unlimited funds and staff levels, they could easily set up projects to make digital copies for streaming or print on demand for physical versions of the films they've determined no longer have mass market appeal. But they simply are reluctant to do so, and woe be to you who shared some clips from your dads 1980s VHS copy with some friends.
I believe IP as a concept is unjust and should be abolished, along with many other things that we all just accept, despite them making us all miserable. Realistically speaking, I don't see that happening any time soon, but a quick compromise that could be done without any fuss (well, if lobbying wasn't a thing) would be to add an exemption for preservation. Could be limited to orphaned works, where there is no legal consensus on who does in fact still own the IP. It wouldn't solve the issue, but it would ensure that some works are not lost forever after their fifteen years of relevance are up.
Until then, I'll stick by the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 motto.
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