How Did the recopywrite "It's a Wonderful Life"

Factual Questions
1

From my understanding the copywrite on the movie ended and that is how virtually every station got a hold of a print and showed it for free.

Then someone figured out how to recopywrite it. How did they do that?

You’ll note it’s only one NBC now.

2

I know that for many years it was in the public domain, and then one day Ted Turner ‘bought’ it. I’m not sure how he did this either.

3

The movie was in the public domain, and you can’t copyright something once it’s there. However, I seem to recall that they determined that the sound track was never in the public domain, so they were able to argue that people were free to play it as long as they didn’t run the sound.

Actually, Turner/NBC phased this in gradually, letting TV stations continue to run it for a year or two before taking control.

“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

4

Republic Pictures, which is owned by TNT, claimed that they still had the copyright on the music, the underlying story, and the graphics in the opening sequence. Republic asserted that they owned enough of the rights to different parts of the film that it constituted ownership of the whole film.

Since Republic had Ted Turner’s millions behind them, it was easy for it to tell the people who owned other prints of “It’s A Wonderful Life” that they had to cease and desist showing it. If you didn’t, you would get sued by Republic where you would be buried under a pile of legal fees.

So, it was easier to just give in to Republic (and Ted).

I view it as a combination of an interesting combination of intellectual property law and the power of big business.

I can just picture George Bailey now going up to Ted Turner and telling him off about the whole situation. However, in today’s world Ted Turner would probably own the rights to Clarence.

5

This is only a personal opinion, but Thank You, Ted.
Every Christmas season I got Wonderfuled to death.