Kinema Club Subtitling Consortium

[Lang Thompson]

>Finally, on the notion of copyright, weren't laws in all major film
>producing countries harmonised at the GATT talks a few years ago? If so, and
>I believe this is the case, then copyright persists for something like 75
>years after the death of the author. Which could be the screenplay writer,
>the film company or director in the case of a film. Maybe even one of the
>actors. Despite what the so-called "public domain" companies seeling mail
>order videos in the States may say, there really is no such thing as a film
>that's owned by no-one. 


The GATT treaties co-ordinated existing copyright laws among signee
countries; one main effect, at least in the US, was that films previously
public domain here but still under copyright in their country of origin
were now placed back into copyright in the US.  (The earlier Berne treaty
states that any work under copyright in its country of origin is protected
in any other country that's part of the treaty.)  Whether the copyright
lasts 50 or 75 years or whether there are extensions or whatever is still
up to each individual country; there's no overriding international
copyright law.  As for where the term starts, this is usually pretty well
defined so whether critics or scholars consider a director an "author" is
irrelevant.  In the US, the term for collective works like films starts
from the date of creation not after the death of writer, director or actor.
 Actually there are films that are owned by no one; that's what "public
domain" means.  Many of them are obviously early silent films far past the
copyright limit but many are also films where extensions were missed,
copyright registrations were improperly filed or not at all (a situation
that can no longer happen), or other such problems.  It's certainly true
that many of the films sold as public domain by some video companies are
not in fact public domain but it can often be hard to determine without
doing a copyright check.

LT
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Lang Thompson
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/wlt4

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