Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

TanksAndSpartans wrote:But say you want to buy SB III. Is it possible? I would say yes. Is it legal? I'm guessing not....

The answer is yes you can, and pretty high quality at that, including the packaging.

As for the second question, many of these sellers have their legal bases covered. The source I refer to appears to.

The guys selling old NFL broadcasts or NFL Films boots are tempting fate. Several guys on ebay ran into legal trouble years ago. Oldcapecod11 is correct, the fuzz has better things to do, but I wouldn't want to be standing around when NFL legal decides it's time for a sweep. Mr Rare Sportsfilms has done his homework, but what I don't understand is his selling copies of the Sabol's work when those same films are supposedly covered by a Films copyright (i.e. 1964 NFL championship & Browns highlight disc). Maybe he gets away with it because he owns 16mm prints of the dvds he sells? I've never had this adequately explained to me.

The eBay guys are low hanging fruit.

On the other hand, when you're bold enough to put up a professional website that includes legalese regarding recording laws (not referring to Rare Sports Films, but others) one can assume the people running it feel they're adequately prepared for a legal challenge.

I'd add that laws are laws and should be respected but the way the NFL has treated the guy who owns the film of Super Bowl I, well, it's hard to sympathize with them.

I'm better with numbers than laws - maybe Mark Ford can help out here - but what are the different varying laws about items going in to the public domain? I thought it was 50 years, but I don't know about books, photos, films, TV, etc.

For books and photos, I have always understood the statute of limitations to be 75 years (Mark may correct me on this). For moving pics or sound recordings, I don't know.

Perhaps Jeremy will chime in. He is a prosecutor and deals with criminal law every day.

JeffreyMiller wrote:For books and photos, I have always understood the statute of limitations to be 75 years (Mark may correct me on this). For moving pics or sound recordings, I don't know.

Totally made up but I support a football Freedom of Information Act. After 50 years teams in the league would have to release all of their paperwork and documentation. Maybe films and photos fall under copyright but its information feels more like with the government has under the Freedom of Information Act.

I suppose it self serving, however what harm can be done from 1965 coaches notes?

JeffreyMiller wrote:For books and photos, I have always understood the statute of limitations to be 75 years (Mark may correct me on this). For moving pics or sound recordings, I don't know.

At the PFRA event in Cleveland two years ago there was the Uncle Danny guy selling the audio CD's of the Browns radio call of the 1964 NFL Championship Game. I bought one because it was going to a police charity, but apparently he bought abandoned storage units at auction and won a unit that had the official radio broadcast of the game in it. I didn't ask about the legalities of it because it was for charity.

Thanks guys - I always wanted to have this discussion. Honestly, my best source for old footage is YouTube. The Sneaker game highlights have been up there for years and I have a few other favorites.

I've also made some (granted not persistent) attempts to track down old footage myself. I called the HOF and they told me they have about 30 minutes of film from the 30s available and that if I made an appointment I should be able to watch it. Someday, I would like to do that. But, when I questioned a little further, the gentleman told me that the HOF really isn't in the business of selling footage to "fans" and that I should call NFL films.

When he mentioned NFL films, I thought of Chris Willis's bio of Dutch Clark. It mentions four pieces of footage on Clark. I went to the NFL films website and found this: http://www.nflfilms.com/specialorders/. It didn't sound that encouraging, nor list anything from the era I was interested in, so I stopped there for now. I'm wondering if it's possible NFL films considers some of this footage to fragile to transfer to DVD - I don't know the technicalities of it.

So hypothetically, say someone was selling Dutch Clark footage or whatever and the NFL or NFL films had the rights - it would be illegal for me to buy it, but there may not be a way for me to buy it from the owner of the copyright - that feels kind of.... frustrating.