European archives release vintage films online

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They are kind of sneaky about it

Take Snow White by Disney. It was created in 1938, 70 years ago. So here in Canada it now public domain as the copyright has expired. There isn't even a copyright notice on the movie but there is on the DVD due to new content in the extras such a music video, commentaries and such. So the DVD is copyright protected but the actual feature movie is not. I just found that kind of interesting.

Now in the US I'm not sure if it is public domain yet. It might be old enough to be public domain now. 70 years? Not sure. It's even possible it went public domain before the copyright extensions occurred, not sure though. But assume it did make it to public domain. The DMCA prevents you from removing the copyright protections on the DVD which disallow access to the public domain feature due to additional content that is copyright protected. Sneaky isn't it? I think that's exactly why they love the DMCA. It allow them to keep something under copyright protection even though it's a public domain work by just using encryption like a blanket over the entire DVD to protect the extras that are under copyright protection. So what this means is the DMCA still applies because a new commentary is protected by copyright and cracking the encryption would mean violating he DMCA on the commentary but not for the feature film.

Posted by: voska1   Posted on: 02/13/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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