Dear Gary, Thanks for your eye-opening post. I'd love to see your list but didn't get the attachment. The issue you raise is one that faces distributors as well. The primary reason titles are not available digitally is embedded copyrighted material which has not been cleared for digital delivery.. Depending on the amount and nature of this footage, the costs can run up to $50,000 for a standard historical documentary. That expense would be almost equaled by the highly specialized labor necessary to locate and negotiate rights digital deals. In the case of many older titles, the necessary video logs and music cue sheets are simply not available. There is no way that an older film could recoup these additional costs in the present unstable (and un-lucrative) digital market.
The expedient many distributors (including some content aggregators) are using is to release a film digitally with the proviso that they may take it down (implicitly, when an infringement is noticed.) So, the purchaser of a subscription is really only getting the right to stream the content until some copyright holder gets wind of it. Of course, in 95% of the cases no one will, so the risk may not be appreciable especially spread over 5000 titles. (By the way, I believe FMG requires that the copyright holder of a film warrant that he or she has cleared the digital rights.) Newsreel itself is in denial on this issue. The upper limit for damages is $115,000 per infringement but most cases are settled simply for the cost of the clearance. In our film, "Strange Fruit," however, the cost of clearing the title song and signature performance would be $35,000. I hope this sheds some more light on this troubling situation. Larry. Lawrence Daressa California Newsreel 500 Third Street, #505 San Francisco, CA 94107 phone: 415.284.7800 x302 fax: 415.284.7801 [email protected] www.newsreel.org -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 9:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: videolib Digest, Vol 39, Issue 90 Send videolib mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/listinfo/[email protected] y.edu or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of videolib digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Repost: Quick Question re: Cataloging Media Sets (Meghann Matwichuk) 2. What gets streamed...what gets used ([email protected]) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:03:53 -0500 From: Meghann Matwichuk <[email protected]> Subject: [Videolib] Repost: Quick Question re: Cataloging Media Sets To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Some of you may remember that I posted the following query to the listserv at the beginning of the year. I did get a number of great responses (thank you!), but the question got buried a bit in a list mishap where duplicate messages spawned between videolib and videonews. I thought I'd toss it out one more time to see if those of you who did not respond in January might be able to give their $.02 this time around. Thanks, Meghann -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Quick Question re: Cataloging Media Sets Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:36:16 -0500 From: Meghann Matwichuk <[email protected]> To: [email protected] I am curious to know what your general approach is to cataloging movies which are packaged in sets, such as the Criterion Eclipse Series; for example, The First Films of Samuel Fuller, which contains three individual films. Would you catalog this as: A) One record with three parts, e.g. The First Films of Samuel Fuller (set, parts 1-3) or B) Three individual records, e.g. The Steel Helmet, The Baron of Arizona, and I Shot Jesse James? If you have an extra second and could let me know what kind of library you represent (academic / public / etc.), I'd appreciate it. Cheers, ************************* Meghann Matwichuk, M.S. Associate Librarian Instructional Media Collection Department Morris Library, University of Delaware 181 S. College Ave. Newark, DE 19717 (302) 831-1475 http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/instructionalmedia/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment scrubbed and removed. HTML attachments are only available in MIME digests. ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:51:16 -0800 From: [email protected] Subject: [Videolib] What gets streamed...what gets used To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Hi all In light of deg's Big Statistics (not to be confused with the teenpic deg's Day Off), I've continued to stew about the whole issue of collection development/selection vis a vis streaming: the question of why/when to stream, or, more precisely, when to commit increasingly precious collection dollars to a serial payment obligation. I know I've blathered endlessly about this "just in case vs just in time" conundrum in the past, but I think it's worth continuing to ponder it seriously in order to avoid the knee-jerk "streaming is cool and convenient, user's want it, let's leap" scenario. Thus said, I did a bit of due diligence recently by taking a look at what has been requested for classroom screening over the past month (approx Jan. 22 thru Feb 22). The findings are eye-opening, to say the least. (List of titles is attached, with departmental users indicated. In many cases, a number of courses in the same department used the same film during this period). Of the 212 features/TV shows and the 194 documentaries, a TINY number of titles are currently available for licensing to stream. And of the titles available for licensing, only one or two were used in classes with more than 30 or 40 students enrolled (Race: Power of an Illusion and the MEF stuff) Now, I'm not saying that Berkeley is typical (I would NEVER say that Berkeley is typical), but these figures tell me something about cost-benefit when it comes to licensing access to streamed content for my particular institution. The current match between online availability and actual classroom needs is not all that great--at least at UCB. In the old order, taking a risk on a "just in case" acquisition was not all that big a deal: you bought a tape or DVD (once), publicized it, and hoped for the best. If it lay unused over the short-haul...well, chalk it up--SOMEONE might eventually find it useful. In the world of term-licensed content, the rules of the game have changed--the stakes are higher. In this fiscal environment, paying serially for under-utilized content (or for casual recreational viewing) simply isn't an option. gary handman Gary Handman Director Media Resources Center Moffitt Library UC Berkeley 510-643-8566 [email protected] http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC "I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself." --Francois Truffaut -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed and removed. Name: reverves.doc Type: application/msword Size: 79872 bytes Desc: not available Non-text attachments are only available in MIME digests. End of videolib Digest, Vol 39, Issue 90 **************************************** VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
