Copyright, Preservation, and Archives: An Interview with Eric Schwartz

Copyright influences and controls preservation and access for archives, corporations, and private collectors. This legal concept benefits creators and rights-holders, as exclusive control over works is the economic basis for the creative industries. The evolution of copyright from protection of authors to an instrument of international trade has tightened the control of owners and placed archives and archivists in an uncomfortable position. And a nearly open-ended copyright term undermines the role of archives in long-term preservation and public access to their collections.

The survival of older works may depend on happenstance, but their availability is often due to the vicissitudes of copyright. Copyright—literally ownership of the exclusive right to control the making of copies—is as much an underpinning of the film and television industries as 35mm film. And under current law, many copyrights have outlasted the works they were created to protect.

Eric Schwartz has been a leader on these issues in the worlds of Congress, the Copyright Office, higher education, nonprofit archives, and studios. Eric is familiar to many Association of Moving Image Archivists members through his work with AMIA–and the Library of Congress–sponsored National Film Preservation Board and the National Film Preservation Foundation.

From his early career on Capitol Hill and the Copyright Office to private practice, Eric has continued his association with the Library of Congress, playing a pivotal role in the establishment of the National Film Preservation Board, the National Recording Preservation Board, and the National Film Preservation Foundation. These have promoted the preservation activities of the Library of Congress and routed Federal funding to small archives across the country. This Federal funding has helped legitimize the activities of many small institutions to conserve and preserve their collections.

These have given him a unique perspective on the commercial and archival worlds, each of which faces challenges of financial solvency in a world of constant technological change, rapid obsolescence of electronic formats, widespread piracy, and a risk of irrelevance if unable to keep pace with new patterns of distribution, use, and creative reuse.

question: How did you develop your interest in movies, film archives, and copyright?

My love of movies started as a child, thanks, in large part, to my father. My father (and mom) loved films and books, as well as the performing arts. My dad had relatives who worked in Jewish theater and vaudeville in New York; a few even tried their hand at getting film work in Hollywood, but they were unsuccessful. My father's great uncle, Nathan Goldberg, had been a fairly well-known player in Jewish theater on the lower East side of Manhattan; his stage partner for a time was Billy Gilbert.

Shemp Howard and Billy Gilbert in Three of a Kind (1944).

Courtesy Monogram.

I do recall watching films—Laurel and Hardy or something like that—and seeing someone sneezing, and my dad saying, "That's Billy Gilbert—he was Nathan's stage partner." Another of my relatives worked backstage in legit theater, and my dad spent a summer with him in New York as a stage manager, including one play with Tallulah Bankhead. So my dad was the personal connection that sparked my interest.

My dad loved the "trivia" of naming film actors as they walked on screen, and the writers and directors as well, and telling me something about them, and that helped to develop my interest in and knowledge of film, especially older films (at least the ones shown on television). I remember as a kid being taken by my parents into New York City (we lived on Long Island) to see films that were only being shown there—like the first few Woody Allen films, and also foreign films and "art house" pictures. One of my vivid memories is being about eleven or twelve—probably too young—and seeing a double bill of Bullitt and Bonnie and Clyde with my dad, and loving both films. Another recollection is of him taking me to see Gone with the Wind in the Syosset theater [on Long Island]; and another...