Regular readers will remember that back in 2014 I posted some episodes of a BBC series called Time Out of Mind on YouTube. The programmes were interviews with prominent science fiction writers, and I’d been supplied with digitized copies of VCR recordings made when the shows aired back in 1979.
Today YouTube wrote to me to say that the episode featuring Michael Moorcock had been taken down due to a copyright violation complaint. This was nothing to do with the BBC. Rather it was a specific complaint about that episode which contained clips from a film of a Jerry Cornelius story. I thought at the time that one would be at risk, even though the clips are quite short. Still, at least it was up there for over a year. Hopefully you all got to see it.
When I get time I will do an edit that removes all of the Cornelius clips, because the interviews with Moorcock and M John Harrison are priceless.
I continue to entertain hopes that one day the BBC will make the original series available somehow. Their copies will be much better than the ones I was given.
If you want I can wander round the film/VT database and find out if the BBC still even has copies of the originals. If you’re lucky, they’ll still exist and the Beeb will have given them to the BFI.
That would be very kind of you.