Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

The Film Collector, The Fbi, And The Copyright Act, Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

We are presently in the early middle stages of a media revolution which will reach its climax when films, in one form or another, will be found in people's homes and under consumers' control in much the same way as books and phonograph records. Although the availability of home videotaping equipment represents a giant step forward in the process, the revolution began long before the invention of the Betamax. For well over twenty years hobbyist film collectors, currently between 20,000 and 120,000 in number, have been purchasing sixteen and thirty-five millimeter prints of both copyrighted and public domain films, and …