Memories in the Marketplace: Civil Rights Movement Images and Intellectual Property Law

In the spring of 1963, television news cameras broadcast scenes of water from powerful fire hoses knocking down schoolchildren and police dogs attacking peaceful demonstrators during Bull Connor’s response to the "Children's Crusade" in Birmingham, Alabama. In a sense, that image belongs to every American or – national boundaries aside – to every person who shares a commitment to the ideals of equality and justice that were central to the movement.  But in another, very practical, sense this image belongs to NBC Universal Corporation.  Since NBC cameramen captured the footage, the network’s parent corporation now owns the copyright for that filmed footage – which means that NBC Universal gets to decide who can view those images and how much they must pay for the privilege.  
    Memories in the Marketplace considers how consumer culture and intellectual property law shapes access to the informal archive of images, sounds and stories that contribute to the constantly evolving memories of the U.S. civil rights movement. At the heart of this presentation is a discussion of the copyright issues that took the pathbreaking Civil Rights Movement documentary film series  “Eyes on the Prize” out of circulation. The documentary – which combines newsreel clips, photographs, songs and interviews – could not be broadcast on television for over a decade and was not released on DVD due to lapsed copyright licensing agreements. This paper describes some of the challenges involved in re-releasing the film as well as the debates surrounding the “illegal” screenings of the film and other civil disobedience tactics involved in the grassroots movement to make the film available.
    This paper provides a new take on the growing debate regarding the “privatization of the public domain” and the ways in which intellectual property regulations are transforming our shared visions of the African-American past.