Published in Pop + Politics dot com, February 14, 2005

It is the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till in the first of the 14-part series, “Eyes on the Prize,” that immediately haunts most people. It was the first image that received an unanimous gasp from my students, some of whom the next day declared, “Mr. Sathe, I can’t get that image out of my head.” It was the image that glued me to the screen. This is what images do, for better or worse. They haunt us, force us to remember the past. They are at their most powerful when they invoke a yearning to learn more about the world around us.

“Eyes on the Prize” is the seminal American civil rights documentary of our time. The epic re-telling, through interviews of civil rights leaders, newspaper clippings and archived video footage, paints a stunning portrait of America between 1954 and 1985. And it is these primary media sources which allow the film to succeed in both scope and depth. The film weaves its way through America’s “Second Revolution” by detailing the struggle of blacks in a segregationist South. In highlighting this struggle it does what so many films before it failed to do: it reports on the grassroots movement as effectively as the leaders of that movement brought about change in America. From the stoic bravery of Mose Wright and Rosa Parks to the eloquence of a young Martin Luther King Jr., and the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the fire hoses of Bull Connor, there has never been a compilation of historical material that so accurately described a movement.

It is vital that future generations see this documentary. Unfortunately, they may potentially not. According to a Wired article, “Eyes on the Prize…is no longer broadcast or sold in the United States. It is illegal.”

"Eyes on the Prize" has currently lost licensing rights to innumerable video clips, songs, lyrics and photographs that were used in the movie and is mired in a cobweb of copyright restrictions. When the film was first being produced, Blackside Inc., the company that made the film, was under a strict budget and could only afford to purchase the rights to certain footage and music for a short period of time. Once that short period of time expired ten years later, the producers could no longer afford the exorbitant costs to re-purchase or renew those rights. The list of copyrighted items in "Eyes on the Prize" is long and includes the footage of a group of people singing “Happy Birthday” to Martin Luther King Jr. Amazingly enough, the song itself, “Happy Birthday,” is also copyrighted.

Copyright laws were enacted primarily to progress the arts and sciences and to give creators the freedom and the enticement to create. If you film an event or write an original story or paint an original painting, you are given monopoly rights over its use for a limited time. Copyright law that once issued monopoly power to its owner for 14 years with an extension of 14 years have expanded to life plus 70 years for individual authors and 95 years from publication for corporate authors.

While copyrights ensure that authors and artists get compensated fairly for their work, the tragic social consequences associated with these extensions of copyright have been documented extensively by notable lawyers, creators, organizations and even some government officials.

Recently major corporations, in response to an ever-growing threat by file-sharing networks and other technological innovations, have instilled a fear in the public that artists are not being paid for their work. They have asserted that piracy through file-sharing networks and other means of digital copying has hindered their ability to pay artists. Whether this is true is still a point of dispute. Nevertheless, Congress has been quick to pander to this fear by passing a multitude of legislation hindering not only technological innovation, but innovation in general. Through both extensions of the current copyright protections and new legislation heavily influenced by the content industry, scenes containing incidental footage of pop culture are left on the cutting room floor, music using sampled beats has never seen the market, and new modes of distributing content by technology providers has been shut down.

“Eyes on the Prize” is the worst nightmare of the content industry and Congress. I doubt many people -- if any -- in Congress or the content industry would publicly be opposed to the selling, airing or distribution of a civil rights documentary. But privately, through the threats of lawsuits and legal action, they are doing just that.

While you or I singing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant will not be sued for copyright infringement (logistically it would be impossible), when filmed and broadcast without permission, the producer of a film could be. If the hope of documentary films is to shed light on reality through an unbiased lens, we are slowly eroding our ability to see clearly with the enactment of copyright laws. If we must ask permission before we film a room in which a television in the background plays the The Simpsons, or the stereo blasts Radiohead, or a wall is decorated with an NBA poster -- as we must currently do -- copyright law is no longer enticing creators to create.

In response to the state of copyright and taking the “Eyes on the Prize” series as its standard bearer, Downhill Battle, a non-profit group, launched a campaign to air the series across the country on February 8, 2004. I was one of those who participated, showing "Awakenings" (the first part of the series) to my students. Eyes on the Screen as they called the day, became a demonstration around the world -- from New York to Kentucky, from Atlanta to California, and extending to Switzerland, Germany and Canada -- of ordinary citizens expressing their support for the airing of "Eyes on the Prize."

With coverage from ABCNews, Wired, and The San Francisco Chronicle among others, the screenings highlighted the need to reform copyright laws and rescue a piece of history. As Nicholas Reville of Downhill Battle puts is, “Today we have a participatory culture, by that we mean, a culture where people are creating things and sharing things through technology in a really direct way that doesn’t require massive corporations to distribute content. And 'Eyes on the Prize' is a perfect example of that, it’s a part of our history and it’s the most important documentary on civil rights…Downhill Battle started by focusing purely on the music industry, but the issues surrounding documentary film makers are the same issues that artists that sample music face.”

Downhill Battle is one of many groups pushing for copyright reform. Among the most innovative is Creative Commons, founded by the preeminent authority on intellectual property, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. Creative Commons has developed an alternative to the All Rights Reserved model (the current copyright law) by proposing Some Rights Reserved. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and The Union for the Pubic Domain are also increasing awareness by utilizing creative approaches and representing potential defendants against spurious claims by rights-holders, and Swarthmore College’s FreeCulture.org passed the gospel onto campuses around the country.

These groups and many individuals have scored some major victories, but there have been setbacks as well. Specifically, in preparing for Eyes on the Screen, Downhill Battle posted parts of the film online for people to download in response to the lack of availability of copies for screenings (most copies of "Eyes on the Prize" are held by educational institutions and libraries in VHS, a degradable format). They were asked by rights-holders to take it down. In Vienna, Virginia a teacher who had planned a screening for his students at James Madison High School was forced to cancel due to a threat of a lawsuit at the “licensee level."

Is this right? Should we be threatening educators? Should we be bottling history for the few who can afford it? The declaration of "Eyes on the Prize" is to free man, not only a black man or white man, a rich or poor man; shouldn't copyright do the same? I would hope so.