Blackside Objects To Eyes on the Screen Campaign
Katie Dean of Wired News has been on top of the Eyes on the Prize licensing story from the beginning, and today she filed this excellent report on Downhill Battle’s campaign to distribute the series via P2P. (For more on this story, see my post here.)
I did a little digging yesterday to see whether Blackside, the production company that made Eyes in the 80s and early 90s, even still exists. It does, but in substantially diminshed form. Henry Hampton, its founder and leader, died in 1998, leaving his last series, This Far By Faith, unfinished. The company has not, as far as I can tell, produced any substantial programs since finishing Faith. It passed in Hampton’s will to his sisters, Veva Zimmerman and Judy Hampton, carrying with it substantial debts, but substantial goodwill among documentary and minority filmmakers. This article describes some of the anger surrounding the decline of Blackside, during which reports indicate much of Blackside’s goodwill was squandered.
The Wired News article quotes a lawyer representing Blackside in its attempt to relicense the footage in Eyes:
But Sandy Forman, a lawyer for Blackside and director of the project to re-license the lapsed footage, said Downhill Battle has “no fair-use claim to do this whatsoever.”
“We are going to pursue any and all legal remedies available to stop this as soon as possible,” Forman said. “Clearly we agree that it’s very important to have (Eyes on the Prize) out there but certainly the way these people are going about it is completely unacceptable and illegal.”
She said Blackside does not endorse what Downhill Battle is doing, and the late Henry Hampton — the filmmaker who founded Blackside and produced Eyes on the Prize — “would absolutely not support this.”
This puts Blackside in a tough spot, but so far they’re making the wrong move. From what I can gather, Blackside is trying to gather enough money to pay off its debts by getting Eyes on the Prize back on PBS and in video distribution. The real money is going to come from PBS and PBS Video. PBS Video is going to be selling primarily to schools and libraries. P2P distribution and exhibition of Eyes is not going to make it less likely for PBS to broadcast the series, and won’t keep schools and libraries from buying copies. What this will do is raise the profile of the effort to relicense all of the footage in the series and get it on PBS faster.
A kneejerk “quit infringing” reaction is understandable, but probably not the smartest long-term strategy.
UPDATE: So it turns out Henry Hampton’s nephew is a blogger who’s well-informed about both the copyfight and the internals of what remains of Blackside. His take is here and here.
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the “quite infringing” reaction is just what it takes to raise the profile of this series…
Comment by joe — January 27, 2005 @ 2:34 pm
You gather somewhat mistakenly. Blackside is not trying to recoup any funds by clearing Eyes on the PRize for showings *or* distribution on PBS or PBS media. The research being done with the Ford Foundation grant was intended to determine what resources would be required to clear the rights for PBS airings and PBS media releases. Blackside has not, as far as I am aware, settled on any terms for release of its own rights to PBS for these actions, but Blackside’s concerns over the films (properly, Henry’s family’s concerns for the films) and the history of those films’ relationships with PBS are such that I would be extremely surprised if Blackside were to see substantial monies from any such action. There were separate negotiations underway with other parties for a commercial DVD release of the films, which might have profited Blackside; those negotiations, however, would not have in any way (to the best of my knowledge) impeded the PBS clearance – either the airing or the media release.
There was, indeed, a deal of ‘bad feelings’ on many folks’ part at the closure of Blackside. Blackside was Henry’s film company, and was constructed to further his vision of making films from the ‘Black Side’ of things and to train young minority filmmakers to do the same. With his passing, and the completion of the final projects on the plate at Blackside, the company itself became somewhat untenable without Henry at the helm – and, truthfully, Henry had become unable to provide that guidance some years before his death due to his illness. Assuming he had done his job of training younger filmmakers, he had presumed they would spread into the world to tell their own stories and create their own organizations to do that – just as he did.
The ‘quit infringing’ reaction is not a simple knee-jerk. As I have tried to make clear in my blog entries (and thank you kindly for pointing them out, I do appreciate it) I have problems both with the tactics used and with the aims of DHB. I especially have problems with the fact that none of them ever bothered to check to determine whether efforts were underway to relicense the films before organizing this protest – although I see that since the legal response, Lawrence Guyot and co. have switched gears from saying ‘I encourage everyone to openly violate any and all laws’ to ‘folks should work with Blackside and DHB to work for EoTP’s reissue.’ That was a major part of the response – the fact that I felt that their simple failure to even check on current status with any of the easily available sources betrayed a purposes which was at odds with that which they are now so earnestly pressing.
Thanks for the link.
J.B. Zimmerman
Comment by J.B. Zimmerman — February 13, 2005 @ 3:46 pm