FANTASIA on sale...on EBAY no less!

[Frank Angel]

Got a bit of a surprise when I saw this posted on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/15643863045...Bk9SR7KhtYfNZA

What surprises me is that prints are usually sold between the collecting community...putting them on eBay was considered very dangerous due to the studios' sometime insane legal maneuvers against collectors. I am even more surprised that eBay has not taking this post down as they have had a policy of not allowing 16mm or 35mm prints on their platform as they were chicken shits worried they could be named as third party conspirators if a copyright infringement dispute arose. I also wonder if he thinks this almost 13k$ price tag will be enough to cover his legal court costs when Disney serves him. Man, it sure seems that prices for prints have skyrocketed considerably since I last acquired one. I have a 4trk mag...maybe now selling it could let me finally install a nice pool .

Just for laughs, I asked the seller if this perhaps is the reissue with the Irwin Kostal soundtrack that was issued sometime in the early 90s. That version has all the Deems Taylor intros deleted (too hokey for modern audience thought Disney execs, only to find that messing with a classic got them nothing but nasty criticism from the public and even more critical shade from the critics. Now if you ever tried tod to book that version for the better (much better) stereo sound, you might not be able to even get them to admit they every had such a version. In fact, try and get them to admit they once made a "CinemaScope" version where just the music sections were anamorphic, keeping the Deems Taylor intros at 1.37:1 and then thru the "magic" of Disney, just as the animation and music started, the image widened (stretch) to scope. Talk about CinemaScope causing people to look like they have the mumps. Now you have Mickey Mouse with not only the mumps but looking like an incredibly obese mouse. Critics again lambasted Disney for mucking around with the classic. .

[Juergen Kellermann]

Every day, there are thousands of 35mm and 16mm prints for sale on eBay. You can get features, shorts, newsreels, cartoons, from well-known studio productions and blockbusters to less-known arthouse films. As long as you have enough money. Yes, I think that eBay has inflated prices, though well-known titles like this one were always expensive.

Large parts of the film collecting community have moved to eBay, and to a lesser extend other platforms. But there are still films traded on closed forums, at events and conventions, or even through paper newsletters.

The policy that 35mm and 70mm prints were not allowed to be listed has been discontinued a while ago (e.g. I can't find it on their latest "prohibited items" list). And seeing Disney prints for sale/auction is not uncommon.

[Mark Ogden]

I miss The Big Reel. I use to read every issue cover to cover . . . just like the FBI did.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yeah I see prints listed there all the time. Condition is a bit suspect unless it seems like someone who knows how to inspect is doing the listing.

I even nabbed a 35mm flat throw away print for us to use in the booth for testing/training. Got it for under 100$. Getting cans for it was more expensive.

[Jim Cassedy]

When I first started using e-bay abt 20yrs ago their 'forbidden items" policy clearly stated that 35mm
films were a 'no-no', although I'm not sure how aggressively they enforced it. Some sellers would
get around it by listing as "35mm reels and cans with film" or something similar. But I don't recall
there ever being any restrictions on 16mm films. This made little sense to me, since at the time, I
owned both 35mm and 16mm prints of "High Anxiety" - and so, if I had wanted to sell them, I could
only list the 16mm copy, but not the 35mm one if I wanted to play by their rules. But it's the same
friggin' movie! This made no sense. I asked e-bay for a clarification once and their explanation was
that since 35mm prints are "never" sold to the public, any 35mm films I had were considered to be "stolen".

The old version of FT had a whole forum topic on "Stupid E-Bay Listings" - - which was often
amusing. I have a small collection of 'classic microphones" (some RCA BX-44's & 77's, etc)
and I'm still searching for an Altec/Western Electric 639B (the "birdcage mic") in good shape
and at a price a little bit cheaper than a used car, for my collection.

During a recent search for "Western Electric Microphone" the listing below popped up:
Not_WE_Microphone.jpg
Obviously, this isn't a "Western Electric" microphone, but a cheap "3M" cassette recorder
microphone with the logo held upside down. Lol! ( I don't think the seller was trying to fool
anyone, I just don't think he really knew what he had)

[Ryan Gallagher]

I think a lot of what appears on ebay in this category comes from estate liquidation and storage unit auctions etc.. A few legit collectors and industry folks. Hell even magna-tech sells full prints on ebay now.

[Frank Angel]

I'm not sure how aggressively they enforced it.

Oh they were pretty aggressive, Jim. They would even take down TRAILERS that were posted! They consistently claimed that it was "copyright" infringement, which of course it was not (no one is copying them, no one is exhibiting them), while the studios -- one imbecile lawyer at Universal in particular -- claimed that trailers were the physical property of the studio because the studio never sold trailers or film prints to the public. Nonsense, of course, but one can understand ebay wisely not wanting to get involved with a dispute with the studios. At one point our argument with ebay got so intense that they called about a 7 or 8 sellers to join a discussion board they set up where the arguments were batted back and forth. No studio representatives were on it, I don't think (possibly listen, though). But the point was made that owning the print was in no way a copyright infringement -- the content it's not being copied and it's not being exhibited, and HELLO, as for trailers, they're advertisements. And as for the claim that they're being "stolen property," is absurd on the face of it. Trailers are abandoned property by the millions every year in dumpsters. Someone in that group who worked in a commercial theatre suggested he would send hundreds of trailers back to that lawyer's office at Universal, seeing as how they want their "property" back. The idea that no prints were ever owned outright by individuals, that was debunked by showing that many people in the industry -- directors, cinematographers, producers, actors, etc., are given their own prints. Those eventually get sold or given away or in one way or, HELLO, sold on ebay or elsewhere. Point being, ownership of film prints is not exclusive to the studio. It was pointed out in the discussion that the same argument was front and center in the court case long ago when Fox tried to get back the prints that Roddy MacDowall had in his personal library of his PLANET OF THE APES films. The studio lost...his defense was to show that prints are routinely made available to individuals who own them outright.

Anyway, ebay said thank you, they's take the arguments "under consideration" and then promptly instituted their "no film print" policy. I guess they wisely chose not to get involved; they certainly weren't going to risk having to go to court with a major studio. And it's their platform so they can set whatever rules they want for it.

I wonder when ebay changed that rule and what prompted them to change it, other than ya, the collectors maybe right, but who in their right mind want to pick a fight with any of the major studios who no longer give a hoot about titles that have been available for decades to the general public on video. And FILM? What is this film of which you speak?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

A late friend in Chicago had his entire collection confiscated by the FBI back in the early 1970's. He went to court over it... cost him a lot of money and took a lot of time... but in the end he got them all back. In the late 80's I got a few of them from him including a 4 track mag road show print of The Sand Pebbles. Man, that sound was glorious!
As far as Epay, they likely did not want to have to expend Attorney fees over possible legal issues, that can drag on for ages like my friends did, so they did not allow those listings. It's only the attorney's that make money of these sorts of lawsuits. Since they changed that, I bought and sold lots of films on there. And yes, I miss the Big Reel as well, I subscribed to that for years.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

When I first started using e-bay abt 20yrs ago their 'forbidden items" policy clearly stated that 35mm
films were a 'no-no', although I'm not sure how aggressively they enforced it. Some sellers would
get around it by listing as "35mm reels and cans with film" or something similar. But I don't recall
there ever being any restrictions on 16mm films. This made little sense to me, since at the time, I
owned both 35mm and 16mm prints of "High Anxiety" - and so, if I had wanted to sell them, I could
only list the 16mm copy, but not the 35mm one if I wanted to play by their rules. But it's the same
friggin' movie! This made no sense. I asked e-bay for a clarification once and their explanation was
that since 35mm prints are "never" sold to the public, any 35mm films I had were considered to be "stolen".

Just thinking about that movie cracks me up!! Not his best, but it does have a lot of funny moments in it...

[Leo Enticknap]

...one imbecile lawyer at Universal in particular -- claimed that trailers were the physical property of the studio because the studio never sold trailers or film prints to the public. Nonsense, of course, but one can understand ebay wisely not wanting to get involved with a dispute with the studios.

There was a case in the '80s that almost went to the SCOTUS (sorry to be vague, but I'd have to hit the books to find the reference) over this. A circuit judge ruled that claiming that no analogs of a given item had ever been sold or knowingly given away did not prove that if one was in the possession of an individual unauthorized by the original owner, that (s)he had to have stolen it. The case was of a guy who had taken a print from a dumpster outside a theater, which had a policy of throwing films out if their owners failed to arrange return shipping within a certain time period. The judge ruled that it was abandoned property (obviously!), and that the collector's ownership of it was therefore entirely legal.

[Ryan Gallagher]

If they went after trailers they’d have to treat every other marketing material the same too, including promo posters, which everyone and their uncle collected. The posters that left blockbuster video always ended up in employee hands too. One of the “few” perks of the shitty job. (Ask me how I know). ;-)

[Frank Angel]

The argument was absurd from the get-go and really only a way for studio lawyers and at the time, the MPAA's crazy Jack Everyone-Is-Stealing-Our-Movies Valenti, to justify the high salaries they were pulling in. In the 80s Valenti was rabid about trying to make it illegal for satellite dish manufacturers to sell those massive dishes except to verified industry companies and outlaw sale to individuals. He kept making nonsensical noise about how individuals were purchasing the dishes and watching HBO content belonging to his studio members' "intellectual property," ( HBO used that mode of transmission to send unencoded content from one part of the country to another) as if the average household could afford or had the space for one of those massive dishes in their backyards. I think it was in Sight and Sound magazine that one of his diatribes was published, again about how the whole world is a thief -- especially movie theatre projectionists who he was convinced were copying films right and left -- and that there were copyright infringers under every rock. I wrote a rebuttal letter to the editor which they included in the next issue, basically saying, "...if the MPAA members don't want people to watch their movies using those big satellite dishes, they should keep their damn microwaves our of our backyards." The guy had an exceptional talent for fear-mongering.

Side note -- two MPAA members also tried to get VHS manufacturers to stop selling video recorders because, their "logic" went: the only purpose for a video recorder that could record video from a television broadcast was to copy copyrighted content. I think the two studios who spearheaded that very questionable argument were Universal and, wait for it...Disney. Luckily they lost that one hands down.

But don't laugh yet, because they seem to have gotten away with now making it illegal to make a protection copies of DVDs. Remember when every software manufacturer who sold programs on floppy disks would say right on the disc on it in the instructions, "Be sure to make a backup copy" -- theory being, if the software on the disk (that you bought and paid for) became damaged, you would, you know...have a freakin backup. Well, I know I wanted to carry on that same reasonable methodology with DVDs that I bought and paid for, but oh no, not any more...now that would make me an illegal copyright infringer...a video pirate and I do remember reading the MPAA's reasoning in another one of their court cases -- that the optical disc medium is so robust and difficult to damage that the likelihood of it ever failing was so remote that no one needed to make a backup copy...you know, like LaserDiscs never failed -- and by extension, anyone making a copy of one of those indredibly "robust" optical discs had to have nefarious intentions in mind. Hence the extraordinary and costly lengths that was made to make DVDs and BDs copy proof. And more hence, here comes Handbrake (open source, no les) and DVDfab. Put THEM in your infringement pipe and smoke it!

[Leo Enticknap]

Wasn't that the so-called "Betamax case"?

[Frank Angel]

Yes, exactly. They were so paranoid back then, thinking somehow it would hurt their bottom line. Little did they know that digital was a whole new avenue in which they could sell their product. Turns out it was WAY more detrimental to exhibition than it would be to the studios. What a strange, long and winding road this journey has been. I'm glad I started it in the middle of the 20th Century when the devil hadn't yet planted that evil seed -- the idea of twining a single screen theatre like the magnificent RKO Keiths in Flushing NY or the Loew's Oriental in Brooklyn or the Roxy in Manhattan and then quading them and, believe it or not, TWENTYFIVEing them (the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square) ...and then in most cases, demolishing them. Not the ending I thought it would be.