Found film, another quandary

RaglanSurf

RaglanSurf

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Nick
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I am, in general, in favour of processing and showing found film but I find myself unsure about The Rescued Film Project

http://www.rescuedfilm.com/#!contribute-film/c1n4x

It's not that they're offering to do it for free, it's the terms and conditions I'm struggling with.

It is US based, although I'm not sure if that makes a difference.
 
Tbh, I'd simply advise anyone with an old film of any description to semi stand develop it in a b&w developer......most colour film decades old will probably have so much colour shift, they're as well being devd b&w anyway.*

At least then the only terms and conditions are what you make for yourself(y)
 
Suppose its better than the film being binned. Most folk don't have the facility to deal with old, non c41, films so faced with the cost of souping 50 year old b&w it will probably end up lost. I'm not sure its great that they're effectively rights grabbing the film but odds are the current owner isn't the original rights owner / photographer.
 
RaglanSurf said:
I am, in general, in favour of processing and showing found film but I find myself unsure about The Rescued Film Project

http://www.rescuedfilm.com/#!contribute-film/c1n4x

It's not that they're offering to do it for free, it's the terms and conditions I'm struggling with.

It is US based, although I'm not sure if that makes a difference.
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They're asking you to do something that simply isn't legally possible. The images are under copyright for the lifetime of whoever took them + 70 years. If you don't know, or can't find, who took them, that doesn't mean they're out of of copyright, and it doesn't mean that you can transfer that copyright or licence it to someone else. (The new orphan works procedures involve due dilligence and the payment of a licencing fee)
 
IIRC there can be a separate copyright in a scanned work in some jurisdictions, similar to the publisher's copyright in a typeset work. But I still very much doubt the legality of the proposed transfer. In particular, they don't ask if the donor holds the copyright before "transferring" it.

OTOH this sort of thing is often justified as necessary for the required acts, a bit like the licence that F***book requires from you in order to display your images. Scanning a film produces a derived work, an act limited by copyright. But hey could probably get away with using a DMCA takedown procedure, which I didn't see mentioned. I guess they are hoping that they will find some images that do generate some revenue, at best to support the philanthropic purposes of the site, at worst to make their fortunes. A glance at what they've got suggests they haven't found them yet. (Though the grinning dog is a clear foretaste of the Internet!)
 
If it ever did turn up something valuable, and they published it for profit, and they got sued - I'd worry that they'd claim that the form you'd filled in was in effect an implied warrant that the copyright was yours to assign, and that the infringement was therefore yours, not theirs. It's a massive long-shot, of course, maybe worth it for a curious non-filmy, definitely not worth it for someone who could semi-stand it in some Rodinal for 20p.
 
I love the sentiment of what they're doing but yeah, saying they own the copyright? Hmm... No, no they don't. An image taken as late as the 90's (and well before) is still very much copyrighted to the creator of the image, that original image falling into the hands of someone else doesn't mean the copyright has also transferred. Even if an image is so old the copyright has ceased to be in effect you can't claim it as your own and say you suddenly own it, it just becomes public domain.

It's a bit of a silly claim for them to make really.
 
Well maybe the form should not mention copyright and just say something like "In signing this form permission is given for any pictures retrieved are allowed to be seen by the public"
 
I imagine they're using a variation of Abandonment Of Copyright in the film never having been developed to claim the images are public domain, then asserting their copyright on the basis that they produced the final image. They do have a line on the website asking you to put them in touch with anyone you recognise in the images so that they can return them, however, so maybe the copyright thing is somehow based on it being a derivative work, the substantiality of which is justified through the colour shifts or grain that wouldn't have necessarily been on the original image.
 
Strappy said:
I imagine they're using a variation of Abandonment Of Copyright in the film never having been developed to claim the images are public domain
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You can't abandon copyright by inactivity. The fact that the work is unpublished would have meant something back in the day, but they changed the law in the US in the 1970s so that unpublished works are given copyright, and it was retrospective for all works unpublished before then. For works of unknown authorship, the term is 120 years from publication. I don't see any way around it - someone has the copyright, and it's not the finder and it's not rescuedfilm.com
 
No idea about the legalities but that's really interesting website.
 
Steve Smith said:
It is, but as it cannot be upheld legally, it can be ignored.
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... and, since someone else is taking the legal risk, it can be enjoyed!
 
ChrisR said:
... and, since someone else is taking the legal risk, it can be enjoyed!
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Absolutely!

In reality though, any legal risk in miniscule. The chance of the original photographer finding out that someone now has his abandonned film, realising someone has had it processed then recognising his own photographs from a roll of film he hadn't ever had processed are so close to zero that it might as well be considered impossible.


Steve.
 
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"do you have an instagram we can follow?" :banana::D
 
ChrisR said:
"do you have an instagram we can follow?" :banana::D
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I do actually but didn't want to frighten the good f&c folk where it could be considered 'magic'. I also fear that Roberts might try to hit it with a spade if he saw it in the lounge.
 
Very wise Nick , I remember a few months ago when a twitter account escaped in the kitchens and Roberts took the blunderbuss to it.... carnage. Mrs Bickerstaff, the cook, was off work for weeks with shrapnel damage to her impressively large posterior.
 
Andysnap said:
Very wise Nick , I remember a few months ago when a twitter account escaped in the kitchens and Roberts took the blunderbuss to it.... carnage. Mrs Bickerstaff, the cook, was off work for weeks with shrapnel damage to her impressively large posterior.
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Second time I've spluttered out loud today looking at my phone mid-gig!
 
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