Yes, I know, all my YouTube clips are currently disabled.
Kino International have been 'busy' again an got all of my videos on YouTube blocked, claiming copyright infringement. Copyright infringement on a film originally made in 1927 and which had its copyright expire in the US in 1955.
I thought I'd post about the actual situation with copyright of Metropolis.
Metropolis was made in 1927 by Fritz Lang (1890-1976) and originally shown in the US in the same year. Because the film was was not re-copyrighted within the applicable period (about 28 years back then), it fell into the public domain in 1955. In the past, copyright renewal did not happen automatically. Creators needed to renew copyright to retain the exclusive right to reproduce their work.
This did not happen with Metropolis (probably because it did so poorly in cinemas and wasn't deemed worth it).
That's why there are so many bad, bad copies and versions of Metropolis out there. You may now shudder if you've seen one of these :-)
Here's a general flowchart for determining copyright status:
(Click for a larger version)
Metropolis and a load of other foreign films had their copyright 'restored' in 1998. Quite how this happened, I'm not sure. How can you re-copyright a work that has already fallen into the public domain?
Apparently others wondered how you could do such a thing too. Normally the sequence of a work is:
- Creation of a work
- Copyright protection of the work
- Work falls into public domain
However the Golan v. Gonzalez case filed in 2001, challenged the re-copyrighting of public domain works. Things got complicated, as they do with legal stuff like this. Lots of lawyers probably made lots of money.
Disappointingly, this challenge was not upheld ... but was later reconsidered as Golan v. Holder. The key point of contention here was that re-copyrighting public domains works violates your First Amendment Rights.
The good news was that in 2009 Judge Babcock reversed his earlier findings, stating that "In the United States, that body of law includes the bedrock principle that works in the public domain remain in the public domain. Removing works from the public domain violated Plaintiffs’ vested First Amendment interests." (emphasis added).
Basically that means that works that are in the public domain before 1994, can't be re-copyrighted. Like, um ... let me think ... Metropolis?
Of course, I'm no lawyer myself but the whole concept of restoring the lapsed copyright of a film a bit ... dodgy.
Posts
