History becomes copyrighted
Similar to the Muppets issue I wrote about earlier, “Eyes on the Prize”, a historical work on the Civil War created in 1987, ran into trouble when its time-limited licenses ran out and people wanted to watch this history on DVD. In Licensing our history, Ken Fisher writes:
The situation is one that should concern many historians and those who look to history for learning. Eyes on the Prize, for example, is not a for-profit work. Its use is entirely educational, and yet copyright holders have a tremendous amount of say in what can and cannot be used. What will the history of the early 21st century look like if most film, music, images, and writing are all copyrighted and locked down until the middle of the 22nd century?
In response to Muppets DVD falls to copyright issues: The Muppets DVD cuts several scenes, almost all of which are musical scenes.
- Licensing our history
- “The process of writing and presenting history is different when turning to the modern age, because the available pool of data for the historian of the modern west is partially copyrighted.”
- Bleary Days for Eyes on the Prize
- “Anyone who intends to make products for mass media is really hostage to the terms of copyright.”