When, If Ever, Do pictures Become Public Domain?

[radioz]

I have a nice, antique radio domain that I plan to do something with. I also have a very old Milton Bradley 'Radio' game with a great graphic that I'd like to use. The game itself is pretty weak by any eras standards. I suspect that this game was (at most) in print in the later 20s to very early thirties. Is there anyway to verify the current status of this graphic?



Thanks!

[mark]

You may be able to find the answer to your question within this website: http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/pu...otographs.html

[jberryhill]

The drop-dead simplest answer in the US is that things prior to 1922 are generally safe, provided the image is not also a trademark.

Anything else requires research. The research is often a dead-end, which is the motivation behind including "orphan works" licensing provisions in US copyright law, which are being fought by a number of interests.

[Acro]

Is 1922 a cut-off date or you're going back 85 or so years?

[jberryhill]

The US copyright on anything published prior to 1923 expired, by necessity, before the 1978 revision of the Copyright Act.

Have fun with this:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/

Anything after 1923 requires a decision tree that gets worse every time Congress screws with the act.

And I meant 1922 or earlier, not "prior to 1923".

1922 is the first "unconditionally safe" year.

Copyright in the US used to last for a maximum of 56 years, in two terms. A renewal was required after the first 28 year term. Hence, anything that made it from 1923 to 1979 was "saved" under the 1978 act.

The main issue is that Disney released Steamboat Willie in 1928, and to bottom-line all discussion of US Copyright - there is NO way, NO how that Mickey Mouse's ass is ending up in public domain.

[Gerry]

I have a nice, antique radio domain that I plan to do something with. I also have a very old Milton Bradley 'Radio' game with a great graphic that I'd like to use. The game itself is pretty weak by any eras standards. I suspect that this game was (at most) in print in the later 20s to very early thirties. Is there anyway to verify the current status of this graphic?



Thanks!

Just be careful. Some graphics are not so much a copyright issue as they are a trademark issue.

RCA's Nipper listening to the radio has been heavily protected property.

[jberryhill]

And to underscore Doc Com's point - you can reprint old versions of Encyclopedia Brittanica all you want. What you can't do is call it "Encyclopedia Brittanica".

[Acro]

Example

[jberryhill]

Ah, they are still around. Yes, I didn't choose Encyclopedia Brittanica randomly. A few years ago, there was something of a to-do over what these folks were doing.

[draggar]

The main issue is that Disney released Steamboat Willie in 1928, and to bottom-line all discussion of US Copyright - there is NO way, NO how that Mickey Mouse's ass is ending up in public domain.

Just his ass? What about the rest of him?

(Sorry, I couldn't resist).

It must be rather difficult to enforce this now, though. With Google indexing everything under the sun (and above it), people renaming files, cropping, clipping, shrinking, pictures, when does it no longer become the owner's property?

[jberryhill]

when does it no longer become the owner's property?

Now, in the US, 70 years after the death of author. If a work of corporate authorship, 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.

Copyright term has gotten entirely out of control. The issue is that the value of most works is pretty much nil shortly after publication. But there are a few works that remain valuable for a long time.

Corporate interests hi-jacked Congress and locked up a lot of primarily worthless stuff that people could nonetheless make good use of, for the sake of preserving copyrights in the extremely small quantity of stuff with lasting value.

Remember Walt Disney's "Song of the South" with Uncle Remus, B'rer Rabbit et al.? Would you like to see it again? You can't. Because of the dated racial overtones in that work, Disney keeps it locked up, so it is not even available for, say, study as a social science time capsule.

Consquently, there is a lot of material out there which (a) you can't use, and (b) you can't even find the owner to find out if they care. This is the "orphan works" problem.

Orphan works is preventing the generation of derivative works, or use within other works, and essentially undermining one of the aims of copyright, which is to encourage the production of creative works. Just as Disney made a fortune recycling old folk tales into animated cartoons, creative works build on each other. Copyright was intended to encourage production of creative works by ensuring a right to profit from their production, but it is now strangling the well of artistic and cultural resources.

A proposed solution was to establish a set of diligence standards for someone seeking to use a presumptively copyright work, and if you can't find the owner, then to have a standard mechanism, through the Copyright Office, of providing information about your search and your use, along with a fixed royalty that you would pay if the owner pops out of the woodwork along the way.

A lot of organizations, including those representing photographers and other author interests, became concerned that an orphan works licensing mechanism would provide a short cut to ripping off material that was still economically valuable to the author.

The present situation is a frustrating stalemate.

[Acro]

Good point, John. Also some WW2 propaganda films that Disney created against nazi Germany.

Not to mention that Donald Duck is not a popular character with Disney execs because his "anger fits" are not suitable in today's PC world. Give me a break.

[draggar]

But what about changing it? Look back to when Queen sued Vanilla Ice (Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Ice Baby" sound almost the same as Queen's "Under Pressure" - VI only added one extra note). The court ruled that since it had that one extra note, it was deemed original and not a copy. Huey Lewis and the News settled a similar case out of court with Ray Parker Jr.

Say I write a story, "My phone rang and it was my wife calling" (say that's the entire story to keep it short). Obviously I'm going to copyright my story.

Then, someone reads the story and puts out "My cell phone rang and it was my wife calling". Did he copy my work or would that be ruled original?

Then, someone else writes "My cell phone rang and it was my sister calling". Is that still stealing from my work or not? When is it no longer my work?

The same goes for pictures. With the internet - we have access to just about any picture you can imagine. What if I color it? Crop it? Resize it? Rename it? Add in a funny comic bubble? When is that picture no longer the person's property?

In "the old days" (not to long ago) it was easy - it was all in print and you could, to an extent, have a much easier time distributing your work but now with the internet, once you post something you can pretty much bet that within minutes it could be on millions of sites.

Here's another example:
http://garylessard.com/rockhistory/

I have a site where every day I do some research and put up a "Today in Rock" post. The sites listed, most of them had a direct copy of that page (or had that page in a frame) but others reproduced it in their own way, even though all of the information is publicly available (the information was mainly dates certain songs / albums were released, birthdates, death dates, when songs hit #1, significant events, etc..). (BTW - I never pulled form this site because I noticed that a lot of the information on that site was wrong anyway).

This is also why I'm very reluctant to share my RPG online. As soon as I post it, anyone can grab it and try to claim it as their own (which has happened to me before).

[draggar]

Remember Walt Disney's "Song of the South" with Uncle Remus, B'rer Rabbit et al.? Would you like to see it again? You can't. Because of the dated racial overtones in that work, Disney keeps it locked up, so it is not even available for, say, study as a social science time capsule.

Here is another question and I'm also glad you brought up this example.

The movie mentioned is no longer available in the US (along with other good films (the BBC's "Threads" comes to mind).

Would it be legal for me to:

A) Download these movies (torrent / file sharing?)
B) Copy these movies from someone who owns them (Songs of the South on VHS etc..)?

Note: These movies are not available in the USA.

Edit: (Yes, I know you're not a copyright attorney).

[wussadotcom]

Here is another question and I'm also glad you brought up this example.

The movie mentioned is no longer available in the US (along with other good films (the BBC's "Threads" comes to mind).

Would it be legal for me to:

A) Download these movies (torrent / file sharing?)
B) Copy these movies from someone who owns them (Songs of the South on VHS etc..)?

Note: These movies are not available in the USA.

Edit: (Yes, I know you're not a copyright attorney).

Illegal. But if your to strict on the legal stuffs then its even illegal to breathe. I mean your breathing out dangerous co2 which is not covered in the convention.
I suggest such small stuffs as these are overlooked all the time.
p/s- Am I making any sense here?

[jberryhill]

Would it be legal for me to:

...

B) Copy

No.

The thing about copyright is that, despite all of the twists and turns in copyright, the basic principle is the name - the exclusive right to copy.

It doesn't matter if the film is available in the US. There is no "unless its not available" clause.