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Poster:
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 Video-Cellar |
Date:
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January 08, 2011 03:51:52pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: What's all the hoopla? |
America were kind of on their own in the world with their short copyright terms. The price for protection of American works internationally was joining international copyright agreements and adopting the minimum copyright terms these treaties had been based on for the 100 years before the USA joined (which was the life + a certain period calculation).
In my opinion, the advantage of the "life +" (post mortem) calculation is that there is no room for debate. Joe Author died in 1940 his work entered the public domain last Saturday. No one can bring up copyright notices, registrations and renewals that prove otherwise and, until someone changes the law to retrospecively re-copyright his work, I'm free to use it however I want.
The disadvantage of the old US system is that it is so messy. You have to look for a notice, then a registration, a renewal, then a notice again, find out if and when it was "published". It seem to be public domain so now you have to look for underlying rights. Were they separately registered? Before or after the main work? Is it a foreign work? Did its copyright get restored? and so on....
This post was modified by Video-Cellar on 2011-01-08 23:51:52
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