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60 Minutes episode that came out after it ...it would be almost
impossible. ...Those materials are almost unfindable. . . .
Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded
in newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is
recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we’ve created a world
where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury
America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand
the effect of media on twentieth-century America?
In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law,
copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in libraries.
These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of
knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once
the copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work.
These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress
made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long
as such deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to
borrow back the deposits—for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915
alone, there were more than 5,475 films deposited and “borrowed back.”
Thus, when the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any
library. The copy exists—if it exists at all—in the library archive of the
film company. 2
The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts
were originally not copyrighted—there was no way to capture the
broadcasts, so there was no fear of “theft.” But as technology enabled
capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required
they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be “copyrighted.”
But those copies were simply kept by the broadcasters. No
library had any right to them; the government didn’t demand them.
The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible to
anyone who would look.
Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and
his allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty sta-
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