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Post by Richard Bignell on Mar 11, 2012 12:14:46 GMT
What is the BBC / legal position on this? People are legally allowed to own and sell telerecordings. But all they have ownership over is the physical print, not rights over the content thereof.
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 11, 2012 12:17:19 GMT
What would happen if they tried to sell a missing episode?
Richard
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Mar 11, 2012 12:20:49 GMT
What is the BBC / legal position on this? Hi Richard. Anyone with an original print of 'Doctor Who' owns the physical print, unless that material has previously been stolen. So BBC personnel saving material from destruction would effectively be new owners although technically the constraints of your contract of employment would mean you must return BBC property when you leave the Corporation. Private collectors are owners and are free to buy and sell original material that has entered the open market. Providing no copies are made and duplicates sold, the BBC has no interest. However, we know that quite a few film prints were copied in the 1990's and many duplicates made and these are easily identifiable, so any 16mm prints of certain episodes that appear on auction sites are more rigorously examined. These auctions can and have been stopped in the past. This isn't one of those prints. It's clearly an original of some sort. Regards, Paul
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Post by Richard Bignell on Mar 11, 2012 12:20:52 GMT
From the BBC's standpoint, probably nothing.
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 11, 2012 14:34:47 GMT
Thank you for your answers.
I must admit I hesitated about asking this, and I don't want to speak out of turn, however I think the time might be right to give some sort of opinion on the subject of selling missing episodes.
For all we know, there may be people watching these forums with a missing episode in their hands thinking to themselves - "surely I can make some money out of this."
I would like to propose the view that the best way to make money from a missing episode is to first of all give it back to the BBC so that it is no longer missing and then to sell it on the open market in the way that the chap with this Hartnell episode is doing.
There are three principal reasons why I believe this is the best thing to do:
1) (most importantly) is that by trying to sell a missing episode you would be trying to cash in on the episode's uniqueness. However, given how easy it would be to make a high-quality copy before selling it, a buyer would have no guarantee that the episode was unique. Who's going to pay a lot of money for a missing episode when tomorrow it might turn up at the BBC? Even if you were somehow able to draw up a legal contract which allowed the buyer to sue you if this should happen, you would then have to convince your buyer that your source for the episode hadn't made a copy themselves. If you got it "from source", so to speak, you would then have to publicise this in your sales pitch which could then subject you to legal action from the BBC (who I imagine would scrutinise this sort of deal to the nth degree).
2) Going on the open-market with a missing-episode is going to attract a lot of attention, 99.99% of it *very* unfriendly. You are, after all, cashing in by withholding from a large number of people something which they feel particularly passionate about. Ok, so the world isn't a perfect place, however you should be prepared for people to hate you for doing this as much as they would love you if you decided to return the episode before selling it.
3) Going on the black-market is something I would not recommend unless your surname is Corleone. You have no idea what you're dealing with if you take a step in that direction - who you're going to run up against and how big and ugly they're going to be (likely much bigger and uglier than you). This sort of thing is great for mini-documentaries but unless you really are called Bugsy or something I would not contemplate it.
People can make good money out of Doctor Who film prints, on the open market, once they're no longer "missing". I would conjecture that you will make particularly good money if the episode has only just got back, as long as you publicise well what you are doing. There's a lot of fandom out there who would be very happy to bid for such a real and significant piece of Doctor Who history.
All the best
Richard
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Post by George D on Mar 11, 2012 16:48:43 GMT
I also believe allowing the bbc to have copy prior to sale would give a large amount of publicity for the print which could generate more bidders and therefore a higher potential price.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 17:31:29 GMT
@george - I think you are wrong. The value of a print of an episode that is the only copy in the world (i.e. before it is returned) has substantially more value than it would have once it has been copied. As soon as there are other copies, it becomes about as valuable as any other episode that is out there. As a comparison point - the print of "The Lion" when it was auctioned in New Zealand (after being returned) sold for about $US 750. The "Land of Fear" print is currently at $US564 (£360).
@ Richard -- my guess is that the BBC wouldn't be too keen on allowing someone to auction off a missing Dr. Who without first getting a copy made.
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 11, 2012 18:03:16 GMT
The value of a print of an episode that is the only copy in the world (i.e. before it is returned) has substantially more value than it would have once it has been copied. No it hasn't, because the minute you sell it you can distribute all those substantial copies of it, that you made previously, all over the world, thus reducing it's value to the same as any other print (which will annoy your buyer, of course, though he will have no recourse against you). Richard
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Post by dennywilson on Mar 11, 2012 18:51:08 GMT
.....However, we know that quite a few film prints were copied in the 1990's and many duplicates made and these are easily identifiable... How can those be identified?
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 18:58:59 GMT
The value of a print of an episode that is the only copy in the world (i.e. before it is returned) has substantially more value than it would have once it has been copied. No it hasn't, because the minute you sell it you can distribute all those substantial copies of it, that you made previously, all over the world, thus reducing it's value to the same as any other print (which will annoy your buyer, of course, though he will have no recourse against you). Richard You are missing my point... Let's leave aside any legal issues with selling the print. Let's say I put a 16mm missing Dr. Who on ebay -- three classes of people are going to bid on it -- 1) people who want it returned to the BBC, 2) People (like me) who collect dr. Who films. or 3) people who want to have a missing episode and not return it. For an existing episode, you really only have people in class 2. Fewer people interested means fewer bidders and less uniqueness means a lower price they'd be willing to pay. As for distributing copies -- if someone started doing that, the BBC would come down on them like a ton of bricks...
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Post by Ash Stewart on Mar 11, 2012 19:13:44 GMT
If a missing episode were to appear on eBay it would, in my opinion, sell for at least ten times the amount a non-missing episode would go for. And that would be for a lesser regarded episode, like a Space Pirates ep.
Something highly sought such as TP4 or Power 1 would go for a fortune.
All it takes is two people with a lot of money, and a lot of determination and the budding war goes sky high...
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 19:20:55 GMT
If a missing episode were to appear on eBay it would, in my opinion, sell for at least ten times the amount a non-missing episode would go for. And that would be for a lesser regarded episode, like a Space Pirates ep. Something highly sought such as TP4 or Power 1 would go for a fortune. All it takes is two people with a lot of money, and a lot of determination and the budding war goes sky high... Exactly...
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Post by George D on Mar 11, 2012 19:45:55 GMT
At this point, I dont think a missing episode would show up on ebay delibrately. My gut is if it did, the bbc would probably claim ownership.
With all the duplicate prints on ebay I would hope we have a plan in place should a missing one ever show up. (I dont need to know it just hope we got that figured out.)
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 20:07:07 GMT
At this point, I dont think a missing episode would show up on ebay delibrately. My gut is if it did, the bbc would probably claim ownership. With all the duplicate prints on ebay I would hope we have a plan in place should a missing one ever show up. (I dont need to know it just hope we got that figured out.) I'm lost - what do you mean "With all the duplicate prints on ebay". There haven't been more than a dozen episodes (dupes, originals, etc) on ebay in the last decade... That's not many - compare that to something like "MASH" - there have probably been a thousand of those on ebay in the last decade - I personally had 200 of them at one point., ...
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Post by George D on Mar 11, 2012 20:30:36 GMT
Its what youre comparing it to A dozen Dr Who prints on ebay (which were all existing) is a lot compared to the amount of missing episodes found on ebay or from any source for that matter in the last decade. I dont know what the statistics are of found prints compared to found missing episodes but a dozen to zero gets me thinking.. If there are only a handful of prints made of each episode that amount of duplication had me thinking that there is a chance sooner or later a new one will show up on ebay or elsewhere. Of course feel to fill me in if Im not understanding.
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