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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 ?
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.
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
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
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!