Free Culture Swarthmore

Please come to our showing of Eyes on the Prize! It’ll be taking place Tuesday, Feb 8th, at 10pm in Science Center 101. There will be free food! Below is our press release, which we’ll be sending to various news sources:

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January 31, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Nelson Pavlosky
Land: 610.690.5287
Cell: 973.580.7510
npavlos1@swarthmore.edu
http://swarthmore.freeculture.org
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EYES ON THE SCREEN
students to celebrate Black History Month, exercise fair use rights

Swarthmore, PA - On February 8, Free Culture Swarthmore, a student group at Swarthmore College, will host a public showing of Eyes on the Prize. The documentary series, which chronicles the Civil Rights Movement, powerfully informs our cultural memory of that era. It has long been a staple of high school classrooms. It’s also becoming unavailable because of copyright restrictions.

Downhillbattle.org, the Internet-based organization coordinating the worldwide “Eyes on the Screen” showings, explains: “Eyes on the Prize is made up of news footage, photographs, songs and lyrics from the Civil Rights Movement that are tangled up in a web of licensing restrictions. Many of these licenses had expired by 1995 and the film’s production company, Blackside, could not afford the exorbitant costs of renewing them. Eyes on the Prize has been unavailable to the public ever since.” VHS tapes in libraries and personal collections are decaying and cannot be replaced or re-released on more durable media, such as DVDs.

Nelson Pavlosky, who started Free Culture Swarthmore and helped catalyze the creation of similar groups at other colleges, explains: “The copyright interests of the owners of the stock footage used in this film have to be balanced with the rights of the public to have access to our history. Imagine if you couldn’t access copies of newspapers more than 20 years old. That’s exactly what’s happening as Eyes on the Prize becomes increasingly unavailable…. we’re losing a piece of our past.”

Free Culture Swarthmore believes that copyright law should promote creative work, not suppress it. Its members invite the public to join them in battling unreasonable copyright restrictions that have imprisoned Eyes on the Prize. Part 1: “Awakenings” and Part 2: “Fighting Back” will be shown on February 8 at 10:00 pm. The screening will take place in Science Center room 101 on the campus of Swarthmore College. Admission is free of charge and snacks will be provided.

For directions to and maps of campus:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/visitors/directions_maps.html

For more information about Swarthmore College: http://www.swarthmore.edu/

For more information about “Eyes on the Screen”:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/eyes

This press release was written by David German on January 29, 2005 and incorporates revisions contributed by the membership of Free Culture Swarthmore. The authors license this release for redistribution, duplication, and reuse for any purpose, including the creation of derivative works, provided only that Free Culture Swarthmore is acknowledged and that the acknowledgment includes the URL swarthmore.freeculture.org.

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