Dr Melanie Stockton-Brown, Bournemouth University

Research Overview

My research project was very generously funded by a 2022 SLSA Research Grant of £1500 for “Pushing back: copyright law and film archives”. This funding made it possible to travel to Brussels to carry out primary archival research of documents that no one had researched before at FIAF (FIAF, or the International Federation of Film Archives, is the international federation for film archives, with members from almost 100 countries). My research explored how the historical relationship between FIAF and copyright law shapes the existing copyright practices and views within FIAF and film archiving globally. This research also looked at the ways in which FIAF’s copyright law lobbying have shaped and influenced international treaties and objectives in relation to cultural heritage.

FIAF and copyright law

Copyright issues and film archiving practices have been intertwined from the film archival beginnings in the late 1930s. Using film from an archive, either to screen for an audience or to incorporate into new film works, requires archivists to engage with copyright law. Copyright clearance of film works is difficult, as film copyright is a particularly complicated area of copyright law, and it is very expensive indeed to conduct the necessary research and obtain permission/ licenses for usage.[1] Copyright clearance difficulties impact on the largest archives, as well as smaller ones. Many film archives do not own the copyright to the films they preserve, or rather the copyright holder is unknown or cannot be located. This is further complicated by the fact that the majority of films within film archives are still protected by copyright.[2]

Film scholarship and copyright law have a long-interwoven history, and copyright law impacts on how film archives share their film collections with the public. In turn, this impacts on the films the public see, and the histories and stories we tell. As FIAF has developed and expanded, copyright law has become a crucial concern for its members, with entire annual FIAF conferences dedicated to discussing copyright concerns. However, this copyright focus and legal/ policy engagement and lobbying by FIAF in international copyright law has been somewhat overlooked in academic scholarship.

FIAF’s Copyright Commission

Due to the complexity and importance of copyright law to FIAF members, FIAF set up a Copyright and Legal Commission to research copyright and provide guidance to members. Copyright reform for the benefit of film and audiovisual archives was a key aspect of this Commission’s work. The Commission was active throughout the 1970s. This primary archival research carried out highlighted how important the Copyright Commission has been within FIAF. Activism in shaping national copyright laws, as well as international treaties, has been present within FIAF for decades, with that work continuing today.

From the beginning the Copyright Commission had big ambitions, particularly in relation to copyright reform and a united approach to copyright law from its member archives. At the FIAF Executive Committee in 1971, “it was decided to work on the preparation of a draft for a reform of the copyright laws as they affect film archives. The draft is to contain all the reforms which archives would like to see irrespective of political viability”.[3] This demonstrates that FIAF were looking to reform copyright laws. Not simply to endure them or follow copyright, but to change the law, to push back.

The complexity of copyright laws around the world, and the excellent work the Copyright Commission had done in detailing this complexity, ultimately lead to its ending later in the decade.  The Commission was officially dissolved at the Karlovy-Vary General Meeting in 1980, and copyright work carried out ad hoc basis from this point on. [4]

However, it should be stressed that the Copyright Commission was closed not because copyright law matters were thought to be unimportant within FIAF, but rather the opposite: “These problems were now so important for FIAF that the Copyright Commission, as it first was formed, had not much sense anymore.”[5] It is a task that needed more input and expertise than the Copyright Commission had in its remit. This reality is evidence by the fact that in the following decades copyright law became more complex, with an explosion of copyright legal court cases and reform attempts. As Monty commented in 1994, “Contrary to what some of us might have expected, the copyright problems are getting more and more complicated, which is not making it easier for film archives to present films.”[6]

Dissemination as a zine

It was also a key aim of this research project to ensure that these findings were disseminated freely for anyone who would be interested in them, either from socio-legal copyright scholarship, film archiving practice & scholarship, or in a wider cultural heritage contextual. The SLSA funding made it possible to disseminate these research findings as a zine. The full zine can be accessed online here

Images from the zine:

[1] For example, the UK Intellectual Property Office has found it to be “cost prohibitive” to ascertain whether older films are subject to copyright, due to copyright depending on the deaths of 4 people, therefore a large majority of public domain films remain unavailable due to their uncertain copyright status. See IPO “Copyright and the Voice of the Public Domain: An empirical assessment) IPO 2015/11, Crown Copyright 2015, pg. 8

[2] Claudy Op den Kamp, The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen (AUP, 2018) 52

[3] Neville March Hunnings, “Problems of Film Copyright and Related Matters As They Affect Film Archives – A working paper submitted to the XXVII General Meeting, Wiesbaden”, 1971, pg. 1

[4] Minutes of the Karlovy-Vary General Meeting in 1980, pg. 3

[5] “C.J. Mexico, Copyright Commission”

[6] Ib Monty “Symposium on Legal Rights, Bologna, 1994” (1994) Journal of Film Preservation 23(49)