[d at DCC] Pirating is Illegal! [Was: Movie copyright duration]

[Don Kelly]

Since the estates of many pulp fiction writers from the 1920s and
1930s neglected to renew the copyright on works written before 1937,
many of the stories (notably some of the Conan canon by Robert E.
Howard) appear to be in the public domain.  A guy named Paul Herman
wrote a decent article
(http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought4ws02.html) explaining
this process.  There are probably some relevant references and
arguments in the article which also apply to films.

Don Kelly/

On 7/26/07, Jonathan Addleman <jonathan.addleman at mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> Scott Elcomb wrote:
> > The original movie (b&w) was produced in 1937...
> >
> > Could anyone tell me if can I legally "copy" this movie?  (I'm not
> > expecting responses from lawyers, but I'd really enjoy your opinions!)
>
> Looks like I was mistaken about the US copyrights, actually. While the
> laws in place in 1937 allowed for a 28 year copyright term that could
> also be renewed for another 28 years, the copyright act of 1976 extended
> this renewal to 48 years for works that hadn't yet expired. So anything
> published from 1923 and 1977 is protected for 95 years from publication
> date. That assumes that the original copyright was renewed, of course,
> though I haven't searched the database, since it's such a pain.
>
> Of course, who knows whether the 'author' died more than 50 years ago or
> not. It may or may not still be protected here in Canada.
>
> --
> Jon-o Addleman - http://www.redowl.ca
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