Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Movie Trailer Screenshot (34).jpg

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This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.

Image:Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Movie Trailer Screenshot (34).jpg

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Copyright for the film was renewed in 1981, so this film is actually copyrighted until 2048 at the minimum. Original uploader used copyright information from this site which has no idea what it is talking about as far as I can tell. The site asserts that trailers are separately copyrighted from the film because they come out before the film does—without any legal reference backing this up, and without even addressing the fact that trailers are clearly derivative works from the films themselves (and thus fall under its copyright). It's bollucks and wouldn't stand up five minutes in court—certainly not free enough by Commons standards. Material copyrighted between 1923 and 1963 with a renewal is copyrighted until 95 years after publication date (ref). You can look up the renewal record (RE0000094825, in 1981) at the US Copyright Office website. Sorry dudes. --Fastfission (talk) 01:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that if this is deleted based on the above reasoning (which unless someone has a real good reason to think that a scene from a trailer is going to be different than a scene from the film the trailer is of), then there are a number of other such images that should probably go up on the chopping block. --Fastfission (talk) 01:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Keep The reasoning that trailers cannot be claimed as derivative works by copyrightholders of the movie because they are published before the movie sounds very plausible. The assertion that that this would not stand up in court comes without any legal reference backing this up. Clearly, sabucat.com is still offering these trailers. Has Hollywood taken any successful legal action against them? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:11, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1. The idea that the trailer is published "before" the movie is, IMO, pretty scanty ground. The issue is in any event definitely poorly defined—which makes it dangerously "unfree" by Commons standards. There isn't any case law on it to guide us. Note that "published" is a pretty specific legal term when it comes to US copyright law—taking an ad hoc "that feels plausible" approach is not really a good strategy.
2. The reasoning of this one company is, IMO, not good enough for Commons. Note that on copyright discussion mailing lists the issue is far from clear.
3. Who cares if Hollywood has taken action? That's not the philosophy of Commons, which is about guaranteeing that things are really free. Nobody's sued half of the copyright infringement on the internet, it doesn't make a drop of difference. We shouldn't be getting into legal areas where there is no case law. We have no idea how a judge would rule or what they would consider an acceptable argument.
4. Frankly, this is the sort of issue that I think one would, indeed, want to consult a lawyer about before doing anything major with in one's own professional life. Which probably means that it's not clear-cut enough for Commons.
--Fastfission (talk) 15:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First derivatives of non PD work can fall into the public domain even when the non PD work was released first so the derivative works argument is pretty meaningless. The result tends to be a nightmarish mess mind with "It's a Wonderful Life" being the classic case. The images are not protected but the story is. If the derivative works argument held any weight a copyrighted version of the script of Night of the Living Dead would have been published years ago to recapture the copyright. So onto publication. Given how widespread showing of trailers is I don't think the not published argument holds water. Sure some highly obscure film for which the trailer was only shown at a couple of festivals might trigger issues but for anything mainstream it is unlikely to be a problem.Geni (talk) 16:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Keep Publication in the US is defined as distributing or even offering copies to the public (that's one of the definitions). Showing a trailer to thousands of people qualifies. And this is definitely done before the movie is out (sometimes even before the movie is finished). Unless you can show the trailer carried a proper copyright notice (almost none ever did) this work was published directly into the public domain by lack of copyright notice. -Nard the Bard 19:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    •  Comment Let's fix that reasoning: "Showing a trailer to thousands of people qualifies" is wrong. That does not qualify per 17 USC 101, definition of "publication": "A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication." However, to have that trailer broadcast, the studio had to give out copies of the trailer to the TV companies, and that counts as publication: "The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication." Lupo 12:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • And the movie theatres are what, chopped liver? I agree, merely showing the work at a film festival or a conference is not publication, but distributing copies to the public, as I said, constitutes publication. Movie theatres are engaged in the business of further public performance and display. -Nard the Bard 22:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Comment According to what I am reading on http://chart.copyrightdata.com/ch10.html  : A scene from a movie that also appears in a coming-attraction trailer can be regarded as enjoying the copyright protection of the movie, in cases where (as is common) the movie was copyrighted but the coming-attraction trailer was not. Because trailers are not "copies" of the film, but "derivative works", the requirement to include a copyright notice "in all copies" doesn't exist. This means that only the rare scenes which appear in the trailer, without appearing in the film are in the public domain. The wording of the Copyright Act, 1978, concerning derivative works is : "The copyright in such work (...) does not affect (...) the (...) subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.". One needs to think a little bit about the meaning of "preexisting". If that website is correct, a preexisting work is not a work "published earlier", but a work "made earlier". So, even if the trailer is released first, the movie is preexisting the trailer if the film maker can show that the trailer was made later. Teofilo (talk) 15:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is not right, and I'll tell you why. Anything published without a copyright notice was public domain. In the case of footage from a trailer, there is no pre-existing material which already enjoys published copyright protection. They lost it by publishing it without a copyright notice. The opposite is therefore true. The copyrighted movie contains some footage which is public domain. -Nard the Bard 12:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What this website's author seems to be saying, is that when you see a work, you must first check if there is a copyright notice. If there is no copyright notice, you must then check if the publisher said something implying that it is a derivative of some earlier work. And only if that kind of "declaration of derivative work" is lacking, you can consider that the work is safe for making your own unauthorised copies. Teofilo (talk) 18:06, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This stuff gets messy. In the U.S. "publication" was not defined until the 1976 Act (effective Jan 1 1978), though I think the case-law definition prior to that was essentially the same -- publication of motion pictures were when copies were distributed to theater owners, etc. The 1970 example given at the bottom of this page is when prints of a theatrical film are sent out to distributors for rental to exhibitors. That would also presumably apply to a trailer distributed the same way. The public display was/is not relevant, but in most cases it was already "published" by that time. There was a distinction between "limited" and "general" publication, so pre-screenings of movies to a few people to gauge audience reaction, or just distributing to one theater, was "limited". This mattered because before 1978, perpetual common-law copyright persisted until the moment of general publication, at which point federal law, including registration and notice requirements, took over. For works created in 1978 and later, there is no common-law copyright, and statutory copyright persists from creation. Before though, the length of copyright was based on the moment of first publication. This paper goes into the topic in detail. If a trailer was published without a notice, then its material would have immediately lost its common-law protection (since it was published) and also its statutory protection (since there was no copyright notice). Courts were unforgiving about such technicalities; many simple mistakes resulted in loss of copyright. From that perspective... it could very easily be argued that the material in the trailer is published first, and has a different copyright term, then the other portions published later in the actual movie (thus the movie could be a derivative work of the trailer, different than the post-1978 situation). This would especially matter if the trailer was published in a different year; the copyright term would expire at different times. Movie studios could have gotten around the issue by registering the movie for copyright before the trailer was distributed (and the copyright term was then based on the registration date), but I'm not sure that was generally done. If the trailer did have a notice but was not explicitly renewed separately... that may get fuzzier. Did the renewal of the movie count to renew the scenes also in the trailer? Seems unlikely, since the date of publication also defined the window where a work could be renewed and was therefore different, but obviously courts were liable to rule different ways. Looking at the trailer here, I don't see a copyright notice anywhere. Presuming that the trailer was published at an earlier date than the final film, I would say to  Keep based on PD-US-no_notice. Note that video clips get dicier... material which could be considered derivative of an original book, play, or screenplay (which were often registered as unpublished works) such as a lot of dialog, could mean the clip was non-free. In some cases where the copyright on the movie itself (visual material) has expired, distribution was prevented based on the derivative rights of those underlying works (but those would almost never apply to a screenshot). Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, since there was no copyright notice... it wouldn't matter if it was published before or after the full movie, just that it was published at all. Under the 1909 Act, all published copies had to have the copyright notice, or else it would fall into the public domain. The only way this screenshot is a problem is if you could argue that the trailer was never legally published at all. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:00, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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