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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 ?
Just because the story is in the public domain, that doesn't mean you have the ability to use the trademarks.
Oh you silly person. There's no such thing as Public Domain. It's a theoretical construct at this point, and might as well be considered as mythical and unlikely now as unicorns and a third party POTUS.
Believe me, within 20 years, Homer's and Shakespeare's works will be owned by Walt Disney or Sony, and anyone putting on a production of Hamlet will have to pay royalties. This is the world that evil lawyers and culpable, retarded politicians are creating.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
That is specifically what public domain does NOT mean. Anyone can make money off things in the public domain, if they can find a way to make them valuable to others, up to and including simple reprinting or rebroadcast.
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.
I've given up on trying to talk sense into morons like him, who know absolutely nothing about a topic yet decide they just have to comment on it anyway. For every one you set straight, several more takes his place. It's like the Hydra of stupidity. Stupidity, or a very, very desperate need for attention.
That's not preventing Google from putting different requirements for making money on their service. They can refuse to pay you if the work isn't yours if it is public domain. Since the work is public domain, you cannot require them to pay you for use of the work itself either. (Formats, and the simple act of uploading a copy, aren't copyrightable, so your act of uploading it doesn't matter.)
Oh shit, this guy's on to us.
Hail Hydra!
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.
The court ruled in Dastar v. Fox that a trademark cannot be used as an ersatz copyright.
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
You can't in general prove that something published post-1923 is public domain. We do not have (any more) a requirement to register copyrights, plus we now have very long copyright terms. Either would be bad, the combination is (quite deliberately) pernicious. It means that, while you may have good reasons to assume that something is PD, you can almost never know for sure. There are two major exceptions - works that have been declared to be PD by their owner, and works by the US Government (which are PD from birth). US Government works are generally pretty safe, but works declared PD are not always (as you have no way to prove the donor actually owns them).
If you think that this implies that our copyright laws need to be changed, you are IMO correct. I would go for a term of 14 years, one renewal possible, with registration required. The wailing from the rent-seeking entertainment industries would, of course, in that case be something to behold, but that would have some entertainment value in its own right.
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
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.
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
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.
If it's public domain, they don't have to pay anyone. Google has just as much rights to make money from a public domain video as anyone else, if you don't like it, host it yourself.
The bald faced hypocrisy of "this work is public domain, damn Google for not paying me for it!" just discredits everyone here calling for more works to enter the public domain. Google is doing what a good publisher should do, sharing public domain work and collecting a small revenue to pay for its trouble, "eporue" on the other hand is a parasite, seeing rent on something he didn't create, like some feudal baron. Adam Smith and Karl Marx agree on one thing and one thing only, rent seeking is inherently bad, so whether you are a conservative or a socialist you should join together and pillory this leech.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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
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)
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!