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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 ?
Unless the copyright office gives out such things (and I doubt they do), I'm not sure you can get proof. The fun thing is that they've changed the rules multiple times, invented nonsense like a "common law copyright" (in NY) and otherwise revived dead copyrights by law (the Supremes have no problem with that).
Major copyright holders want to kill the public domain and the very idea that the public is granting them limited rights which revert to the public at the end as it's a threat to them owning everything.
There are more than a dozen companies distributing these cartoons on DVD and not paying anyone or asking permission. If they want to name-check "Superman", they can do that too. It's factual information, not product branding.
Where there might be a legitimate copyright issue is copying someone else's film transfer or encoded video, if something creative was done with the presentation, possibly including restoration. In similar cases, the court has ruled that exact duplication, even that requiring a high degree of skill, has no creative element and not covered by copyright.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
+0 Meh
The court ruled in Dastar v. Fox that a trademark cannot be used as an ersatz copyright.
If the video you post is, for whatever reason, popular enough that it could bring in ad revenue that makes it profitable vs. not continuing to host and distribute it, there is absolutely no basis for them to refuse to pay you. The reason you generally can't make money on stuff in the public domain isn't because you're not allowed to, it's because anybody can use that same thing and put in exactly as much effort as you did.
TotalBiscuit could post a public domain video, and it could make a shitload of money, because lots of people already follow him. You could post it, and your grandmother might notice. This is absolutely no different from when shows and movies that are in the public domain are rebroadcasted by cable companies. The content doesn't really have any monetary value; the distribution channel does.
If Google really wanted, for whatever reason, (I think that's a dickheaded motive, honestly) to prevent people using their services from profiting from public domain works, then what they should do is create their own public domain channel, and heavily weight it in search results for anything the collected works are relevant to. I wouldn't even be all that mad if they did; it'd make public domain material more visible and accessible to people who wish to repurpose it for transformative works.
Superman (from Action Comics #1, his first appearance) is still under copyright. He will remain under copyright (owned fully by Siegel and Shuster while the trademarks are owned by Warner Brothers Entertainment) until 2033. There is nothing short a Constitutional amendment, that will further extend the copyright.
HOWEVER, the story of the Fleischer Superman cartoons is complicated by the fact that before the 1976 Copyright Act came into force, NTA (who then owned the copyrights to most of the Fleischer library) had actually let the copyright on those 17 works slide, and they had simply forgot to retroactively renew the copyright as they had the right to do as they would have been within the time limit to do so until 1983. Ergo, the Fleischer Superman cartoons entered the Public Domain by virtue of natural copyright expiration.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The problem is the OP doesn't see how he's violating the copyright of the VHS or DVD he ripped it from, which was certainly done between 1987 and 1995 for the VHS or sometime after if it was from a DVD. You can claim the original source material is PD, but unless the OP has the physical film, there is zero chance of WB not going after it.
If he is providing a copy of a video that is unavailable on youtube then he is providing a service and I have no problem with him getting a little revenue from it. One problem with streaming media is the long tail and most stuff in the public domain has very little value and therefore very little incentive for someone to upload it.
I have no problem either with this either, but Google does not choose do do this and he has no standing to dispute it. If he had a contract or even a verbal agreement to begin with, you could say that Google acted in bad faith, but he didn't, he merely gave an unsolicited video, explicitly not covered by copyright to Google and asked for a cut. It's not wrong that he asked for a cut and if Google had have given it to him, I would not object to it, so long as they did not prevent others from re-uploading the same video under the same terms.
What I do object to is the gall of this guy to come to Slashdot, a notoriously pro-free-use forum to complain about Google using this public domain video without paying him. If he did make this work more accessible, it pales in comparison to the work that Google have done, providing hard disk space, bandwidth and searching capabilities. If he wanted to distribute it, why didn't he host it himself?
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
A video of a game I made was refused.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As evidence - I submitted the link to android market place, where I am selling the game - offered source code, source assets, etc. Several times, along with asking what would do for valid evidence.
150k views later, lots of evidence and questions from me... "monetization rejected" and still ignored.
And that's with A video I made, of a Game I made!