Showtime/Smithsonian petition

Scott Macaulay has an in-depth post about a coalition of filmmakers petitioning to stop Showtime's licensing of the Smithsonian's archives. Anthony Kaufman's blog has a copy of the petition for you to download, as well as a link to the NY Times article on the movement. I encourage you to get involved.

In addition to rooting for the petition drive to work, I'm also curious to see the effectiveness of the petitioning for other reasons. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this is exactly the sort of issue that a healthy AIVF would have been able to lobby against in years past. Now, with AIVF ailing, the petition drive is an interesting test case that might predict how well filmmakers might be able to organize, advocate, and change the system in a world without AIVF.