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4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from December
2017</title>
5 <description>Entries from December
2017</description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/
</link>
10 <title>Idea for finding all public domain movies in the USA
</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_finding_all_public_domain_movies_in_the_USA.html
</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_finding_all_public_domain_movies_in_the_USA.html
</guid>
13 <pubDate>Wed,
13 Dec
2017 10:
15:
00 +
0100</pubDate>
14 <description><p
>While looking at
15 <a href=
"http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/
">the scanned copies
16 for the copyright renewal entries for movies published in the USA
</a
>,
17 an idea occurred to me. The number of renewals are so few per year, it
18 should be fairly quick to transcribe them all and add references to
19 the corresponding IMDB title ID. This would give the (presumably)
20 complete list of movies published
28 years earlier that did _not_
21 enter the public domain for the transcribed year. By fetching the
22 list of USA movies published
28 years earlier and subtract the movies
23 with renewals, we should be left with movies registered in IMDB that
24 are now in the public domain. For the year
1955 (which is the one I
25 have looked at the most), the total number of pages to transcribe is
26 21. For the
28 years from
1950 to
1978, it should be in the range
27 500-
600 pages. It is just a few days of work, and spread among a
28 small group of people it should be doable in a few weeks of spare
31 <p
>A typical copyright renewal entry look like this (the first one
32 listed for
1955):
</p
>
34 <p
><blockquote
>
35 ADAM AND EVIL, a photoplay in seven reels by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
36 Distribution Corp. (c)
17Aug27; L24293. Loew
's Incorporated (PWH);
38 </blockquote
></p
>
40 <p
>The movie title as well as registration and renewal dates are easy
41 enough to locate by a program (split on first comma and look for
42 DDmmmYY). The rest of the text is not required to find the movie in
43 IMDB, but is useful to confirm the correct movie is found. I am not
44 quite sure what the L and R numbers mean, but suspect they are
45 reference numbers into the archive of the US Copyright Office.
</p
>
47 <p
>Tracking down the equivalent IMDB title ID is probably going to be
48 a manual task, but given the year it is fairly easy to search for the
49 movie title using for example
50 <a href=
"http://www.imdb.com/find?q=adam+and+evil+
1927&s=all
">http://www.imdb.com/find?q=adam+and+evil+
1927&s=all
</a
>.
51 Using this search, I find that the equivalent IMDB title ID for the
52 first renewal entry from
1955 is
53 <a href=
"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017588/
">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017588/
</a
>.
</p
>
55 <p
>I suspect the best way to do this would be to make a specialised
56 web service to make it easy for contributors to transcribe and track
57 down IMDB title IDs. In the web service, once a entry is transcribed,
58 the title and year could be extracted from the text, a search in IMDB
59 conducted for the user to pick the equivalent IMDB title ID right
60 away. By spreading out the work among volunteers, it would also be
61 possible to make at least two persons transcribe the same entries to
62 be able to discover any typos introduced. But I will need help to
63 make this happen, as I lack the spare time to do all of this on my
64 own. If you would like to help, please get in touch. Perhaps you can
65 draft a web service for crowd sourcing the task?
</p
>
67 <p
>Note, Project Gutenberg already have some
68 <a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=copyright+office+renewals
">transcribed
69 copies of the US Copyright Office renewal protocols
</a
>, but I have
70 not been able to find any film renewals there, so I suspect they only
71 have copies of renewal for written works. I have not been able to find
72 any transcribed versions of movie renewals so far. Perhaps they exist
75 <p
>I would love to figure out methods for finding all the public
76 domain works in other countries too, but it is a lot harder. At least
77 for Norway and Great Britain, such work involve tracking down the
78 people involved in making the movie and figuring out when they died.
79 It is hard enough to figure out who was part of making a movie, but I
80 do not know how to automate such procedure without a registry of every
81 person involved in making movies and their death year.
</p
>
83 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
84 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
85 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
90 <title>Is the short movie «Empty Socks» from
1927 in the public domain or not?
</title>
91 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_the_short_movie__Empty_Socks__from_1927_in_the_public_domain_or_not_.html
</link>
92 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_the_short_movie__Empty_Socks__from_1927_in_the_public_domain_or_not_.html
</guid>
93 <pubDate>Tue,
5 Dec
2017 12:
30:
00 +
0100</pubDate>
94 <description><p
>Three years ago, a presumed lost animation film,
95 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_Socks
">Empty Socks from
96 1927</a
>, was discovered in the Norwegian National Library. At the
97 time it was discovered, it was generally assumed to be copyrighted by
98 The Walt Disney Company, and I blogged about
99 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opphavsretts_status_for__Empty_Socks__fra_1927_.html
">my
100 reasoning to conclude
</a
> that it would would enter the Norwegian
101 equivalent of the public domain in
2053, based on my understanding of
102 Norwegian Copyright Law. But a few days ago, I came across
103 <a href=
"http://www.toonzone.net/forums/threads/exposed-disneys-repurchase-of-oswald-the-rabbit-a-sham
.4792291/
">a
104 blog post claiming the movie was already in the public domain
</a
>, at
105 least in USA. The reasoning is as follows: The film was released in
106 November or Desember
1927 (sources disagree), and presumably
107 registered its copyright that year. At that time, right holders of
108 movies registered by the copyright office received government
109 protection for there work for
28 years. After
28 years, the copyright
110 had to be renewed if the wanted the government to protect it further.
111 The blog post I found claim such renewal did not happen for this
112 movie, and thus it entered the public domain in
1956. Yet someone
113 claim the copyright was renewed and the movie is still copyright
114 protected. Can anyone help me to figure out which claim is correct?
115 I have not been able to find Empty Socks in Catalog of copyright
116 entries. Ser
.3 pt
.12-
13 v
.9-
12 1955-
1958 Motion Pictures
117 <a href=
"http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/
1955r.html#film
">available
118 from the University of Pennsylvania
</a
>, neither in
119 <a href=
"https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp
.39015084451130;page=root;view=image;size=
100;seq=
83;num=
45">page
120 45 for the first half of
1955</a
>, nor in
121 <a href=
"https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp
.39015084451130;page=root;view=image;size=
100;seq=
175;num=
119">page
122 119 for the second half of
1955</a
>. It is of course possible that
123 the renewal entry was left out of the printed catalog by mistake. Is
124 there some way to rule out this possibility? Please help, and update
125 the wikipedia page with your findings.
127 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
128 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
129 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
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