Not the German federal government; the copyright transferred to the state of Bavaria after the Nazi party’s publishing house Eher Verlag was liquidated in 1945.
I thought copyright on a printed work lasted 70 years after the death of the creator.
Bob Kane died in 1998. Still a way to go.
And I believe that as much as I believe the French anti-hijab law was about national security. That was just the excuse they used to get everyone on board. Any country that wanted to keep Naziism illegal could ban the book, and the rest of us who realize how stupid (and fascistic) that is can publish the book and learn about Hitler.
That applies only to a few cases, none of which are applicable here. And even if they were applicable, they wouldn’t be applicable, because Bob Kane wasn’t the copyright holder of record in 1939. I assume Detective Comics, Inc. was.
If so, then Batman, which first appeared in *Detective Comics *27, cover dated May 1939, falls into the category of “1923 through 1963: Published with notice and the copyright was renewed.” For those items, copyright lasts 95 years after publication date.
So it would be into the 2030s, then?
And AFAIK that is what seems to be the Bavarian authorities’ plan as of 1/1/2016: not go for an extension of the Berne regime, but to apply the existing German anti-Nazism laws and the more rigid current anti-hate-speech laws and regulations in the EU to keep it off circulation. Use trade/political pressure to entice what other countries they can into keeping it off public domain under their laws.
In 1945 there was no real universal copyright so in many countries after the war the rights were seized by forfeiture and either allowed into public domain under the old rules or auctioned off.
The Berne regime seems to have had as a greater objective making creative intellectual works a nearer equivalent of land or of a bricks-and-mortar business: something that successive generations of the family or successive stockholders in the business can continue to control and exploit, including for passive profit. So it would have been in the interest of publishing houses, literary agents and film studios worldwide to push it.
I also note that Canada has life + 50 and doesn’t seem to be doing too badly in book sales. So I’m not convinced syncing up was absolutely necessary.
(I just found out when I saw that Project Gutenberg Canada has the Chronicles of Narnia series.)
I’m not convinced either. If copyrights hadn’t been extended, the only real difference would be that you wouldn’t need Disney’s permission to distribute copies of Steamboat Willie. Mickey Mouse would still be a trademarked character.
As the classic Disney movies (eg, Cinderella) start to approach their public-domain date, I suspect that we’ll see a push from Disney to bump things out to 150 years, or something ludicrous like that.
Can you elaborate on this, Exapno Mapcase?
According to the wiki article on the Berne Convention, signatory countries must enact that copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50. They can go higher than that minimum, but are not required to:
However, the Copyright Term Extension Act provides copyright longer than the minimum required by the Berne Convention:
As **Big T **has noted, Canada is a signatory to the Berne Convention, but the Copyright Act only provides copyright protection for the minimum required by the Convention: life of the author, plus 50 years.
[QUOTE=Copyright Act of Canada]
Term of copyright
6. The term for which copyright shall subsist shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by this Act, be the life of the author, the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.
[/QUOTE]
So why do you say that the extension was required by the Berne Convention?
It was indeed to match the EU, not strictly the Berne Convention.
So, the extension was not required by the US’s international treaty obligations.
The extension was a policy decision from the US government, to match the 1993 EU Directive, which obviously is non-binding on the USA.
Since when has the U.S. ever cared about international treaty obligations?
Unless I’ve misunderstood, I thought that you were saying that the extension was required by the Berne Convention. That does not appear to be the case.
Slight hijack, since it doesn’t bear on the copyright issue one way or the other, but Bob Kane’s contribution to creating Batman is literally limited to, “Hey, what about a super hero named Bat-Man?” Literally every other element of the character, from the origin story, to costume, to the gadgets, to the supporting (and opposing) cast was created by someone else - mostly Bill Finger, whom Kane deliberately screwed out of any credit for the character.
No, Mr Downtown said that. I was responding to his getting the principle correct, and it didn’t seem important that he conflated that with the EU. Getting the world’s two biggest markets into sync was always the key for the U.S. and it would have happened if Disney never existed. Canada is certainly an oddity, but apparently it’s so relatively tiny that it doesn’t sway world markets.
Kane actually had Finger sign a work-for-hire contract with him so that he couldn’t claim any rights.