I wanted to respond to this thread as an editor for Alexander Street. We spent a close to a decade building a full-text database called *American Film Scripts Online*, clearing the rights to authorized and accurate versions of screenplays through the writers, the archives and the studios that controlled these rights. In our conversations, we often asked rights owners specifically about the sites you mention below and without exception they confirmed that these sites have not cleared the rights and are posting unauthorized and inaccurate versions in most cases. My next question to them was, ‘why don’t you pursue legal action?’ The answer was usually ‘we don’t have time to chase every pirate site, the legal expense doesn’t make sense, and in the end the material is liable to turn up again later on a different illegal site.’
For our project, we spent years clearing rights with studios like Warner Bros., Sony, MGM, sourcing accurate unpublished typescript copies from archives like USC and the Library of Congress, and working with the Writers Guild Foundation and with filmmakers like Gus Van Sant, Paul Schrader, Oliver Stone, and many others. All agreed on the value of an alternative online archive for teaching and research, with rights properly cleared, royalties paid back to rights owners, and featuring authorized versions of the screenplays. Over the past 13 years, we’ve seen ever-increasing usage at the schools that have access to the archive, which includes just over 1,000 screenplays, and one of the goals, lingering in the back of my own mind at least, has been that American Films Scripts Online might decrease use of the pirate sites. Whether or not this is wishful thinking, we’ve now started work on a second volume of Film Scripts Online, having cleared rights to 170 screenplays from the Studio Canal archive in the U.K. This includes the old Ealing Studios output, such as *The Lavender Hill Mob* and *Kind Hearts and Coronets*, as well as co-productions with American studios, like Michael Cimino’s *The Deer Hunter*, David Lynch’s *The Elephant Man*, Carol Reed’s *The Third Man*. You can get more detail about our project here: http://alexanderstreet.com/Film-Scripts-Online. Will Whalen Alexander Street wha...@astreetpress.com On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Mandel, Debra <d.man...@neu.edu> wrote: > Hi- > > I have all these links on my media and screen studies lib guide—I took > them off of other guides and researched, and they seem legit! So far I > haven’t gotten any negative feedback on these sites. > > Debra > > > > - Daily Script <http://www.dailyscript.com/tv.html> > Includes movie and tv scripts and screenplays in proper screenwriting > format. > - Drew's Script-O-Rama > <http://www.script-o-rama.com/snazzy/dircut.html> > Includes 10000+ free movie scripts, transcripts, screenplays, > teleplays and more since 1995. > - Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) <http://www.imsdb.com/> > Includes HTML-formatted scripts indexed by film and tv genres. > downloadable and free, with links to script vendors. > - The Script Source <http://www.thescriptsource.net/> > Includes free movie and tv scripts and script writing tips. > - Simply Scripts <http://www.simplyscripts.com/> > A database of hundreds of downloadable scripts, movie scripts, > screenplays, and transcripts of current, classic and maybe a few > soon-to-be-released movies, television, anime, unproduced and radio shows. > - Springfield! Springfield! > > <https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Springfield!+Springfield!&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8> > Dedicated to The Simpsons and host to thousands of free TV show > episode scripts and screencaps, cartoon framegrabs and movie scripts. > - TV Writing > <https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/us-drama/show-collections> > Includes US and UK drama, US comedy and animation and pilot scripts. > > > From: <videolib-boun...@lists.berkeley.edu> on behalf of "Sarah E. > McCleskey" <sarah.e.mccles...@hofstra.edu> > Reply-To: "videolib@lists.berkeley.edu" <videolib@lists.berkeley.edu> > Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 1:14 PM > To: "videolib@lists.berkeley.edu" <videolib@lists.berkeley.edu> > Subject: [Videolib] websites with movie scripts > > Hi all, > > > > I have a professor who wants to make PDFs from websites with movie > scripts. An example is Kramer vs. Kramer at > http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Kramer-vs-Kramer.html. She also has a PDF of > Scarface that she got somewhere, I think from this website > http://www.dailyscript.com/index.html. She was telling me that Daily > Script must be legit because the web page for the New York Film Academy ( > https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/10-great-websites-download-movie-scripts/) > links to it… > > > > Am I being overly cautious? I am not going to post a PDF ripped from a > sketchy site … but I am even hesitant to link to these sites. Advice?? > > > > Sarah > > > > VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of > issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic > control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in > libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as > an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of > communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video > producers and distributors. > >
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
