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Ask Slashdot: How To "Prove" a Work Is Public Domain?
New submitter eporue writes: YouTube claims that I haven't been able to prove that I have commercial rights to this video of Superman. They are asking me to submit documentation saying "We need to verify that you are authorized to commercially use all of the visual and audio elements in your video. Please confirm your material is in the public domain." I submitted a link to the Wikipedia page of the Superman cartoons from the 40s where it explains that the copyright expired, and to the Archive page from where I got it. And still is not enough to "prove" that I have the commercial rights. So, how do you "prove" public domain status ?
Public domain just means anyone can use it for free. If you can get some sap to pay money for something that's free, good on you.
As I was saying, if this were about trademarks, they wouldn't be asking him to prove that the material is in the public domain; public domain is a copyright issue, not a trademark issue.
More importantly, though, you misunderstand the purpose of trademark law. Trademark law doesn't exist to "protect characters" or other intellectual creations, trademark law exists in order make sure that when customers buy something, they know who actually produced it. Applying trademark law to a 70 year old cartoon character does not serve such a purpose.
You may be pretty sure, but you're still wrong.
Public domain means you can use it as you please. One perfectly acceptable use is to sell it; though obviously you'd have to find someone willing to pay, but often people will due to ignorance, convenience or value added services.
1. I am not a lawyer.
2. General public domain works are pre-1923 works. Works post-1923 that are in public domain are so for technical reasons, such as failure to renew copyright.
3. Wiki claims the cartoons are in the public domain by linking to page 13 in Superman vs. Hollywood in Google Books.
4. On page 13, it asserts "By the latter part of the century, Max Fleischer's Supperman cartoons had fallen into the public domain, where they were subject to all manner of ignoble treatment by third-rate video distributors." (https://books.google.com/books?id=OmYt2xaxktEC&pg=PT25#v=snippet&q=public%20domain&f=false)
5. This assertion in 3, however, is not evidence that nobody currently owns rights to the cartoons.
6. It would appear from surrounding text in Superman vs. Hollywood that Warner Brothers is likely the current rights holder to Superman.
7. To prove the cartoons in question are available for public domain use, the following (perhaps more) would likely need to occur:
- Show no current copyright on said material by showing expiration of copyright and doing exhaustive search in pre-1978 and post-1978 archives via http://copyright.gov/records/index.html
- Show statutory justification that expired copyrights in fact enter public domain
- Show that the work in question meets the aforementioned requirements
Bingo. In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly come out and said that trademark is not to be used as back door perpetual copyright. See, e.g., Dastar.
Nothing posted to
Who would have thought!
This might help: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki...
And, the updated "Rule 6 How-To" at https://copy.pglaf.org/
For something published in the US after 1923 and before 1964, renewal of copyright was necessary to get a further 28-year extension. (Term extensions in 1998 extended copyright of items published in 1964 onward, and removed the need to renew.)
The Rule 6 how-to has a template for non-renewal research that might satisfy YouTube, if you do the research and send it in.
Only around 10% of items published from 1923 onwards were renewed. (It's no longer required, but you can still renew today.) The US Library of Congress has records of copyright registrations and renewals, and the Rule 6 How-To describes where to get the records. For items from 1923-1963, the renewals for printed items are comprehensive.
Serialization is sometimes a problem. Items might have been published, then published in another form (say, a magazine article that was published as a book), and if the timing is close enough one renewal might cover both items.
Proving something is in the public domain in the US, for printed items, is not that hard for items published from 1923-1963. It takes some time and expertise, and there is always a chance there is a renewal that you didn't find. Proving it is still copyrighted is also easy: show me the renewal.
- Greg
Taking a copyrighted work who's copyright is about to expire, and republishing on a newer format such as VHS or DVD, does not renew the copyright.
You don't have to use the original source if the copyright is expired and the new source is identical to the original. However, if the newer version has been altered (cgi added or something) then the added CGI would have a new copyright term, separate from the original copyright (but would only cover the modifications, not the original content)