Response to Jessica & David... Jessica: My institution would be perfectly entitled to videotape my lectures and then market them as Internet courses without paying me anything extra. So far they have not done me this honour but I have heard of similar things happening: one colleage at another institution, for example, was required to hand over copies of all her lecture notes and course material when she left, and this was subsequently handed over to other lecturers so that the courses she designed continued to be taught after she'd gone. My contract states that any intellectual property content I generate in the course of my employment becomes the copyright of the university, in respect of which they pay me my salary. As for trying to make money out of bootlegging my published works, good luck! (I've just had a book proposal rejected by seven publishers on the grounds that it would be unlikely to sell enough copies for them to break even, let alone make a profit) The only ACADEMIC film books that could ever hope to make serious money for their authors are a very tiny number of mass market undergrad textbooks which are heavily promoted internationally (e.g. Bordwell & Thompson, Pam Cook's 'Cinema Book'). Is there anyone reading this list who could honestly say that they've made enough money to live on purely out of academic writing? Secondly, I do not believe that the practice of studios withdrawing the versions of films that precede a major rerelease (usually referred to as a 'restoration', sometimes correctly, sometimes not) is a red herring or a minor issue; I'd argue that it is very important. These titles are being substantially changed, and then the studios are trying to do what Winston Smith did in '1984', i.e. erasing all evidence of the previous version. If the studios were willing to place good quality prints and intermediate elements in a number of recognised film archives together with an undertaking to allow unrestricted access for research viewing and (within limits) rep screenings then I would agree that the use of illegal copies for research is totally unacceptable in any circumstances. Universities aren't rich (not the ones I've studied and worked at, anyway), but they can afford to send someone to London to view a print. But far to often, studios and distributors leave the genuine researcher with no option but to use illegal copies. As Paolo Cherchi Usai notes in 'The Death of Cinema', the idea of copyright started as a way of protecting intellectual property which cost money to create, but has ended up as an over-powerful weapon in the hands of big corporations. And I'm sure that small distributors such as Kino suffer from that just as much as higher education. David: In my experience, I don't think your comments about academics guarding their own intellectual property rights but wantonly ignoring those of others is entirely fair. There is no academic researcher I know who would resort to pirate material first, and institutions spend a lot of money on measures such as site licences for recording satellite channels offair, educational use agreements and suchlike. In my work as an archivist I have had no end of problems with commercial broadcasters abusing copyright but only one instance of an academic doing so (which was out of ignorance, not malice). This outfit in Miami sounds like organised crime from the standpoint of anyone working within the industry, and if they are selling vast numbers of illegal tapes the question has to be asked as to why the authorities haven't done anything about them. But is it realistic to expect someone who sees their advert in the humanities department of a university to know that they are an illegal operation? After all, placing your order with a credit card is not the same thing as connecting up two VCRs and pressing the button. Anyone with an ounce of sense should know that the latter is illegal, but the consumer cannot realistically be expected to identify an illegal trading operation that is masquerading as legitimate. That's what we have trading standards officers for. L ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html