The Hidden Cost of Documentaries - New York Times

Very intriguing. It makes one wonder how we can solve the issue or music rights (let alone the myriad of copyright issues with print).

The Hidden Cost of Documentaries - New York Times: "Mr. Jaszi is an author, with Patricia Aufderheide, the director of American University's Center for Social Media, of a report titled 'Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers,' for which 45 filmmakers were interviewed. Among the more striking examples he cites is 'Eyes on the Prize,' the series on the civil rights movement. Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the department of African and African-American studies at Harvard, has called 'Eyes' 'the most sophisticated and most poignant documentary of African-American history ever made.' But it was last broadcast in 1993, and while schools or libraries may have a copy, it is not legally available for sale or rent on DVD or video.
'There's a whole generation out there who have not seen the program,' said Sandy Forman, an entertainment lawyer heading a project to reclear the rights so that 'Eyes' can be rebroadcast and distributed to the educational market. 'When the rights were originally cleared, they were acquired for different terms. Some were in perpetuity, some were for 3 years, some for 7, some for 10.' Once just one group of rights expired - and there are 272 still photographs and 492 minutes of scenes from more than 80 archives, plus the music - 'we had to pull the film from distribution.'
In August, the project received $600,000 from the Ford Foundation and $250,000 from the New York philanthropist Richard Gilder. PBS's 'American Experience' is considering a 2006 broadcast of 'Eyes.'
'It's not clear that anyone could even make 'Eyes on the Prize' today because of rights clearances,' Mr. Jaszi said. 'What's really important here is that documentary commitment to telling the truth is being compromised by the need to accommodate perceived intellectual and copyright constraints." "