While looking at +the scanned copies +for the copyright renewal entries for movies published in the USA, +an idea occurred to me. The number of renewals are so few per year, it +should be fairly quick to transcribe them all and add references to +the corresponding IMDB title ID. This would give the (presumably) +complete list of movies published 28 years earlier that did _not_ +enter the public domain for the transcribed year. By fetching the +list of USA movies published 28 years earlier and subtract the movies +with renewals, we should be left with movies registered in IMDB that +are now in the public domain. For the year 1955 (which is the one I +have looked at the most), the total number of pages to transcribe is +21. For the 28 years from 1950 to 1978, it should be in the range +500-600 pages. It is just a few days of work, and spread among a +small group of people it should be doable in a few weeks of spare +time.
+ +A typical copyright renewal entry look like this (the first one +listed for 1955):
+ ++ ADAM AND EVIL, a photoplay in seven reels by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer + Distribution Corp. (c) 17Aug27; L24293. Loew's Incorporated (PWH); + 10Jun55; R151558. ++ +
The movie title as well as registration and renewal dates are easy +enough to locate by a program (split on first command and look for +DDmmmYY). The rest of the text is not required to find the movie in +IMDB, but is useful to confirm the correct movie is found. I am not +quite sure what the L and R numbers mean, but suspect they are +reference numbers into the archive of the US Copyright Office.
+ +Tracking down the equivalent IMDB title ID is probably going to be +a manual task, but given the year it is fairly easy to search for the +movie title using for example +http://www.imdb.com/find?q=adam+and+evil+1927&s=all +Using this search, I find that the equivalent IMDB title ID for the +first renewal entry from 1955 is +http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017588/.
+ +I suspect the best way to do this would be to make a specialised +web service to make it easy for contributors to transcribe and track +down IMDB title IDs. In the web service, once a entry is transcribed, +the title and year could be extracted from the text, a search in IMDB +conducted for the user to pick the equivalent IMDB title ID right +away. By spreading out the work among volunteers, it would also be +possible to make at least two persons transcribe the same entries to +be able to discover any typos introduced. But I will need help to +make this happen, as I lack the spare time to do all of this on my +own. If you would like to help, please get in touch. Perhaps you can +draft a web service for crowd sourcing the task?
+ +Note, Project Gutenberg already have some +transcribed +copies of the US Copyright Office renewal protocols, but I have +not been able to find any film renewals there, so I suspect they only +have copies of renewal for written works. I have not been able to find +any transcribed versions of movie renewals so far. Perhaps they exist +somewhere?
+ +I would love to figure out methods for finding all the public +domain works in other countries too, but it is a lot harder. At least +for Norway and Great Britain, such work involve tracking down the +people involved in making the movie and figuring out when they died. +It is hard enough to figure out who was part of making a movie, but I +do not know how to automate such procedure without a registry of every +person involved in making movies and their death year.
+ +As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
+ +