According to Kay Murray’s report in the Winter 2003 Authors Guild Bulletin, which I can’t find online, that’s not exactly the issue in the Simon case, Cliffy.
As part of the rewrite Congress gave creators the right to undo even existing agreements - except when the work for made “for hire”.
That’s where this case turned. All works in those days were “for hire” so Simon & the Authors Guild claimed that to exclude them would exclude all works and make the right to undo valueless. That’s what the Appeals Court agreed to. The right to contract was already a given.
Slate has several details wrong about the copyright status of It’s a Wonderful Life. First, Republic Pictures did not produce or distribute it. The now defunct Liberty Films, of which director Frank Capra was part owner, produced it, and RKO Radio Pictures distributed it. It wasn’t until years later that Republic Pictures, as the successor of NTA Telefilms, acquired the distribution rights.
Second, when a motion picture is published (distributed in a fixed form), all of the original elements in the motion picture are simultaneously published with it, including the screenplay and the music score. When the owner of It’s a Wonderful Life failed to renew the copyright in 1975, all of its original elements fell into the public domain, including the screenplay and the original music score.
However . . . some of the music heard on the soundtrack of It’s a Wonderful Life was not original to the movie, but was taken from other movie scores. Those scores are still under copyright, and thus the excerpts in It’s a Wonderful Life are. Also, the unpublished story “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern, from which the screenplay for It’s a Wonderful Life was adapted, was published in 1996 and registered for copyright. Thus, the underlying literary work “The Greatest Gift” was the claim by which Republic Pictures’ lawyers were able to intimidate enough people to believe their exclusive claim to the film’s distribution.
Films (-- and all other materials for that matter, like maps and publications – ) created by the federal government is instantly in the public domain. So if you want some nice footage of, say, WWII GIs battling “them dirty Krauts” that was shot by the Army Signal Corp., all you have to do is pay for the cost of making your dupe. There are zero copyright fees or limitations.