There are occasions when someone in a film is watching a film on television. We have an occasion to do this in our film. It doesn’t matter what’s on, just that there’s something. I know there are movies out there in the Public Domain, whose copyrights have expired. It would be easier to shoot a scene if we could have one of those playing on the TV and be able to show it instead of setting up the shot so as not to see what’s actually on the screen.
Anyone have ideas for such films, whose copyrights have expired?
Night of the Livinc Dead is public domain (the copyright notice was left off when the title was changed). IMNSB isn’t Reefer Madness (the black & white version) public domain?
Anything before 1923, film or print, is in the public domain. Due to Disney’s litigation, that’s probably about where it’s going to stop for most major works.
How is Disney involved? The person most responsible for the exension of copyright to 70 years were Adolph Hitler. Second was probably the George Gershwin estate.
Disney doesn’t even have to have copyright extended: any important characters of theirs are trademarked, which lasts indefinitely,
I’m familiar with the Gerswhin catalog’s role in copyright extension but not with Hitler. How is he involved?
Disney has sponsored much legislation to extend corporate copyrights, so much so that the legislation proposed by Sonny Bono is nicknamed The Mickey Mouse Protection Act (wikipedia link, but valid). It extended the copyright not just to 70 years, but 70 years from the death of the author, which for a point of relevance means that the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald are copyrighted for a few more years. At one point legislation attempted to extend it for a full century after the death of the author, which would mean that Mark Twain (who has no living descendants and specifically stated that he had no concern as to what happened to his royalties after the death of his daughters [the last surviving one died in the 1960s]) would have been protected.
IIRC, the copyright to Mein Kampf is owned by the Bavarian government. I believe they wanted the copyright law extended so that Hitler’s manifesto would not be free for the taking by possible future Nazis.