Max,

You and Paul Gajdos are really asking the same question so my response here is to both of you.

When I obtained those tapes the ABC told me there was a copyright on them. Australian law extends copyright to 70 years after the creator's death. I believe that copyright limits were raised from 50 to 70 years in both our countries in 2005. It is a bit complex but I think you will get the idea. I do not know just who is legally considered the "creator" as far as the DP program goes, but if it is Dave himself then copyright would not expire until 2042 at the earliest, maybe even 2062. In this case, however, the creator would most likely be a company, ABC (or Fremantle International?), so copyright will exist until 2035 (70 years after creation).

Our law allows you to copy something under copyright for your own use if you already own a copy of it. I assume that refers to copying for your household but it is not likely that you can legally copy it for friends or others. So, I own a copy of DP. I paid a lot of money for it and I can lawfully copy it "for my own use". You can use 10% of copyrighted material for research/review purposes also and I have done this too.

Most of us have copied a CD, a video etc. which is under copyright and given it to someone. Usually nothing more is heard about it because the big companies are more interested in people who are copying for commercial gain. But once you have copied and distributed something, you have lost control of it and you never know where it goes. I have had that disappointing experience myself. Potentially the original copier is still liable if someone wants to take them to task. So I am now even more circumspect about what I copy and who I give it to. This is especially pertinent in the case of Dave's Place because my copy was a one-off special manufacture and the copyright owner knows exactly who they sold it to.

Just this morning I telephoned the ABC to check on the currency of all this for you both as far as they were concerned. Once upon a time I could simply pick up my phone and speak to an actual person in their archives section and have my questions answered.

Not so now.

I was informed that there was a new system that requires you to send an e-mail to their archives library.

I suggest that anyone who is interested might do this and ask if they will sell you a copy of the show. The cost in 1999 was almost $1,000 for the lot because each tape was prepared for me individually, but I would expect to pay a higher price now.

I should say too that when the decision was made to transfer the show from videotape to film for archiving, it was found that some of the videotape had already deteriorated and was clogging the tape heads of the player thus necessitating their constant cleaning. About five minutes of one episode was unrecoverable and some other episodes have an obvious deterioration-degraded picture.

The ABC Archives e-mail address is:

archives.research@abc.net.au