Watch how copyright law is re-writing history, starting with the Civil Rights documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” which has been out of print because of legal trap doors and outrageously expensive licensing fees. Due to the film’s heavy saturation with archival footage and images, its licenses were extremely expensive. The filmmakers could only afford temporally limited clearance contracts. Some lasted for up to ten years. However, after a few years when the first license expired, it became illegal to commercially distribute Eyes on the Prize. It now exists scattered across the V.S.. on VHS in random school libraries. Unless copyright and fair use undergo serious reform, Eyes on the Prize will vanish. So will many other films that have undergone similar predicaments. Not to mention the important projects that copyright intimidates their prospective authors from attempting to create.
Movie directed/produced by jacobs Caggiano, awarded with Fair Use award on the Media that Matters Festival.
licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0