First Few Doctor Who Episodes May Fall To Public Domain Next Year

First time accepted submitter wmr89502270 writes "Doctor Who is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The special The Day of The Doctor will be broadcast simultaneously in over 75 countries and hundreds of cinemas in the UK. Across the world the hotly anticipated special episode will be screened simultaneously in full 3D. According to Copyright law of the United Kingdom, the copyright in a broadcast program expires 50 years from the end of the year in which it is broadcast, which means the first episodes will fall to public domain next year."

Comments

Of course the actual copies existing is in doubt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you BBC beancounters. Thrifty today is costly tomorrow.

BBC's most effective copyright strategy in effect.

[robbak]

Namely, destruction of all extant copies.

BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.

Re:BBC's most effective copyright strategy in effe

[Lirodon]

Namely, destruction of all extant copies.

BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.

Actually, "wiping" was a rather common practice for every broadcaster back then. Tape was expensive, etc.

Re:Doesn't mean you can copy it.

[TeXMaster]

Wrong. It does mean you can copy it. That's exactly what copyright is about. You can (re)publish (and thus create copies of) works in the public domain as you see fit without paying royalties to anyone.

Re:BBC's most effective copyright strategy in effe

[BigBadBus]

Episodes from Tom Baker's era onwards exist in their entirety. The catalogue of stories from before this is rather patchy, and I've put a list of what exists and what doesn't on my website (though you'll need to make sure Javascript is running to see the what the key of icons represents.)

Interestingly, when the "junking" of old Dr.Who episodes stopped in 1978, both the stories you cite ("Tomb" and "War Games") were either missing completely or the majority of episodes had gone; obviously they have since been recovered (the missing "War Games" episodes from the British Film Institute in 1979 and "Tomb of the Cybermen" from Hong Kong in 1991.)

Re:Although I must add...

[girlintraining]

That indicates to me that the US rules are in effect for the US, even if the work was copyrighted outside the US.

That is, more or less, how the law operates. Now when I say more or less, the devil's in the details. There are numerous treaties covering cross-country patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc., so filing in one country extends similar protections simultaniously to all the other signatories... but the implimentation of treaty terms can vary from one country to another, as can the interpretations of some provisions. In Japan, for example, you can patent something that is in every detail identical to your competitor except it's a slightly different shade of muave and it qualifies as a unique work. But that doesn't mean you won't get sued in the United States for patent infringement if you try to market it. The laws are a patchwork of often conflicting and vague tombs of treaties, federal, state, and local law. Hell, California routinely tries to supercede federal authority; Pick up a canister of oxygen sometime "This product is known to cause cancer in the state of california." But nowhere else, apparently. Anyone who wants to sell their product in California has to do business by their funktastic and horribly deranged environmental regulations... and the EPA has been forced to write new legislation specifically to say "... We only have to make a new law about this because California rode the short bus on this stuff. Again."

Re:Although I must add...

[jonbryce]

People are getting confused here. It is only the broadcast rights that are falling into public domain, not the public performance rights.

If you take for example The Snowman, Raymond Briggs wrote the music. He retains the copyright on the music until 70 years after he dies. He is still alive so the clock hasn't started ticking yet. Other people have copyright in all the cartoon drawings, and I believe they are all still alive. The copyright exists on them until the last of them dies. Channel 4 first broadcasted it about 30 years ago. They own the copyright on the act of broadcasting it on public television anywhere in Europe for 50 years. There is about 20 years left to run on that.

So, if for example RAI (Italian TV station) wants to broadcast it, they must get permission from Raymond Briggs, from the cartoon drawers, and from Channel 4. In 20 years time, they no longer have to ask Channel 4, but they still need permission from the other copyright holders.

Re:Although I must add...

[Half-pint HAL]

If you can copy it in the UK, then you have a valid legal copy there. Are you allowed to bring your valid legal copy into the US? If so, then it's in PD in the US, in that anyone can go to the UK, print 10,000 copies, and bring them back, right?

No. There's a legally-recognised difference between importing for personal use and importing for resale.

See also controlled medicines, alcohol and tobaco.

Re:Although I must add...

[TheRaven64]

The Berne Convention says (warning: massive simplifications ahead) that each signatory must treat works copyrighted in other territories as if they were copyrighted in their own territory. That means that if something is copyrighted in the UK, then it is subject to UK copyright law in the UK, but if you are in the USA then it is subject to US copyright law. This means that it can be in the public domain in one place, but not in another.

Re:Of course the actual copies existing is in doub

[Sockatume]

They made the right call at the time, given that the alternative to was to archive every tape and stack up a nontrivial fraction of the BBC's budget in a vault in preparation for applications that didn't exist.

Most media go through a period where the recording format is too valuable not to reuse (magnetic tape) or too fragile to store (nitrocellulose film, early print). Some day maybe we'll invent a way to record brain patterns, but I'm inclined to expect it'll be in a medium like defect-free carbon-hassium nanocrystals that cost $500,000 each. I don't doubt that some re-recording in whatever technology we come up with.

NASA recorded over the Moon Landing masters, at a time when they were better-funded than they have ever been. The BBC is in good company.