[Astaldo711]

I got this from the Public Domain Super Heroes site; (http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_Atom_%282%29)

While the first appearance of Captain Atom and most if not all of his Silver Age Appearances are public domain, any appearances after 1977 of Captain Atom produced by Charlton, DC, or AC Comics are NOT.

Final determination will have to be made by the fine folks here of course. I just thought it was of interest to some people here.

[narfstar]

I will leave that to Janus to decide. Like Konga and Gorgo they are probably all OK but want to tread softly into the SA and not get DC in an uproar.

[Astaldo711]

Don't blame you. They're such a tiny company, they need all the money they can get!

[narfstar]

Yeah lets fight DC. DC does not seem to fight scans like Marvel and Image do. Sites that will not carry upfront bootleg scans of Marvel or Image do carry DC.

[Astaldo711]

Really? I would have thought all big companies just tear apart people for that sort of thing. Probably depends what kind of mood they're in.

[bchat]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some companies might have a unspoken policy of "looking the other way" when it comes to people sharing scans.  I know of one company that has an "unspoken policy" when it comes to material they hold the Copyrights to.  A comic company might look at scans as being a form of free advertising for their books without using any of their own resources.  People can check-out a title and if they like it, maybe get hooked enough to buy the printed version.  The company may also feel that anyone downloading the scans for free simply won't pay for the comics anyway, and so perhaps cracking-down on scans could drive away potential customers.  Besides, I've seen people reading comics & tpbs in the shops and big bookstores, then put the book down and walk away without ever paying for anything.

[Astaldo711]

I'm a big proponent of "try before you buy". Whether it's music or a book I very really run out and buy something blindly. I like to read these old books and read current ones and compare. It's amazing how much they've changed. Not to mention if a company looks the other way it makes them seem a little friendlier and less of a nameless corporation.

[Ed Love]

Charlton didn't register their copyrights with the Library of Congress. The question then raised is when did the copyright law change to allow for an item to be recognized as copyrighted by virtue of having a proper mark and notice without requiring formal registration with the Library? I don't have a good answer. Some of the Law is written in such a way as to argue interpretation both ways. I think some of that was intentional as to part of the reasoning behind the "Library of Congress" was to be a Library and thus the law required copies of works to be sent in for registering copyright and that registration was required to be awarded damages and such. But, a person could register their copyright at any point during the first term, and so registration was required for renewal of the copyright. Notice, while the work could be registered at any point during the first term, the first term begins from the date of publication not registration, inferring that a work is copyrighted from the point of publication and not registration. Thus, you could just not bother to register, see someone ripping your idea off, file a suit and register your work in order to seek damages, even though their act precedes your registering the copyright. Least the way it reads to me.

IF Charlton only had to affix the proper mark and information, AND they did so, then the majority of the "Action Heroes" were copyrighted and not public domain as they are pass the date to qualify for automatic renewals later on.

BUT, Captain Atom debuted circa 1950 (along with some other minor Charlton characters such as Mr. Muscles, and Nature Boy) and would have had to been renewed through the Library of Congress AND there is no notice of renewal for the pre-1960s books and characters.

[narfstar]

The Captain is probably pd and may be here later. I also try before you buy. Illegal downloads as such have made the comic companies money because the ones I like enough I tell my shop to pull for me. Look at the number of webcomics provided for free. They then sell trades of what they just gave away. People buy them.
It is a win win.

[crimsoncrusader]

His appearances in spade adventures were not renewed and I've both physically seen and download his series from issues #78-89 and checked for proper copyright notice. There are none. Can provided the scans if needed.

[Astaldo711]

I'd love to see those!

[Roygbiv666]

Charlton didn't register their copyrights with the Library of Congress. The question then raised is when did the copyright law change to allow for an item to be recognized as copyrighted by virtue of having a proper mark and notice without requiring formal registration with the Library? I don't have a good answer. Some of the Law is written in such a way as to argue interpretation both ways. I think some of that was intentional as to part of the reasoning behind the "Library of Congress" was to be a Library and thus the law required copies of works to be sent in for registering copyright and that registration was required to be awarded damages and such. But, a person could register their copyright at any point during the first term, and so registration was required for renewal of the copyright. Notice, while the work could be registered at any point during the first term, the first term begins from the date of publication not registration, inferring that a work is copyrighted from the point of publication and not registration. Thus, you could just not bother to register, see someone ripping your idea off, file a suit and register your work in order to seek damages, even though their act precedes your registering the copyright. Least the way it reads to me.

IF Charlton only had to affix the proper mark and information, AND they did so, then the majority of the "Action Heroes" were copyrighted and not public domain as they are pass the date to qualify for automatic renewals later on.

BUT, Captain Atom debuted circa 1950 (along with some other minor Charlton characters such as Mr. Muscles, and Nature Boy) and would have had to been renewed through the Library of Congress AND there is no notice of renewal for the pre-1960s books and characters.

But a work doesn't and didn't need to be registered to be copyrighted. At the time, didn't publishers have to put a copyright notice on the work as it was not automatically protected? That's why anyone can make DVD's of George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" - they left off the copyright notice.

[narfstar]

I believe it had to have both. The registration and the posting

[Ed Love]

Right. Different sources give different dates and versions of the Law when Registration was no longer a condition for a work to be considered copyrighted. The closest you get is where the Law talks about Registration in terms of seeking damages, but not actually saying the work is in public domain if not registered.

In the 1976 Revision, we have:
The 1976 Revision does say this:

[Roygbiv666]

Right. Different sources give different dates and versions of the Law when Registration was no longer a condition for a work to be considered copyrighted. The closest you get is where the Law talks about Registration in terms of seeking damages, but not actually saying the work is in public domain if not registered.

In the 1976 Revision, we have:
The 1976 Revision does say this:

[narfstar]

And a copyright holder would probably argue just that if they registered

[bchat]

Subject to the provisions of section 405(a), such registration is not a condition of copyright protection

The wording definitely implies that registration is not required for actual copyright protection as it pretty much allows that a person already owns the copyright BEFORE registration and the final sentence stating that registration is not a condition of copyright protection. But that sentence doesn't really make sense as section 405(a) deals with cases of improper copyright notice affixings implying that what it means to say is that Registration doesn't de-facto give you copyright protection. The use of "condition" is wrong if that is what it is meant to infer, the proper word is "guarantee".  Otherwise, there's no reason to reference section 405(a).

The wording seems fine to me.  The reason people should reference section 405 (a) (which actually deals with Omisions of Copyright Notice) is so that they understand that a lack of a Copyright notice in works produced before the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 doesn't automatically mean that that work is Public Domain.  In other words, something published in ... let's say 1986, in which copies didn't have a Notice of Copyright AND wasn't registered with the Copyright Office, could still have a valid Copyright based on the examples explained in section 405 (a).

[Ed Love]

I don't follow that reasoning. If the amendment is from 1976, I don't think it could be referring to the state of mind of people dealing with copyright in 1988 and the adhering to the Berne Convention. The problem is the provisions of section 405(a) are about how something can FAIL to be copyrighted due to the omission of the notice, the exception to the rule, a negative, yet the second half of the sentence treats it as if it's a positive, that it's about how to successfully copyright something without registering. If you have the proper notation, then you aren't subject to the provisions in section 405(a). Which doesn't make sense to the rest of the sentence.

I find the sentence badly worded, that it should either be "Registration is not a condition of copyright protection, subject to the exceptions in section 405(a)" or "Subject to the provisions of section 405(a), such registration is not a guarantee of copyright protection" depending on whether respectively they are trying to say that a work can be copyrighted without registering provided it has proper notation affixed or that just because something is registered, a work can be failed to be copyrighted if not followed through in applying the proper notations.

And, generally speaking, amendments and changes in the Law tend to not RESTORE copyright protection to public domain works (there are some exceptions, mostly foreign works). Thus, if something published in 1986 would be public domain by the 1976 rules but not by the 1988 rules, the change in the Law isn't necessarily going to change its current status, it's still going to be public domain though the current version of the Law would have protected it if it had been published two years later.

It's why this is a bit problematic. You need to know exactly what the law was when it was published (does it require registration, just proper notation or just being published afford it copyright protection) as well as what the law was when the time of renewal came up (does it fall under automatic renewals) and what it was at the time it came near the end of it's protection status (does it get the extra years and does if so, does it allow the original creators to sue for restoration of the rights).

[bchat]

Section 405 (a) is not about how something could fail to be Copyrighted due to an omisision, but how it could be Copyrighted in spite of the omission.

[narfstar]

So this really does not cover mass distributed comic books. Here is a link to copyright years

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

[bchat]

It seems like (2) & (3) would cover mass distribution of copies distributed without a Copyright notice.

[narfstar]

I doubt that Charlton would have ever made the effort as they did not care enough the first.

[Ed Love]

I see what you're saying (although you are quoting a later version of that section, it would take a bit of time travel for the 1976 Act to be talking about conditions in 1988 but otherwise the gist seems to be the same) but it still reads badly to me.

To further muddy the waters as that only applies to works published after the scope of what we're looking at, the closest major amendment seems to be the Copyright Act of 1909 (http://law.copyrightdata.com/index.php). Perusing that law, I cannot find an instance where it says that Registration is necessary for a work to be copyrighted but it does say:

SEC. 9. That any person entitled thereto by this Act may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this Act; and such notice shall be affixed to each copy thereof published or offered for sale in the United States by authority of the copyright proprietor, except in the case of books seeking ad interim protection under section twenty-one of this Act.

SEC. 10. That such person may obtain registration of his claim to copyright by complying with the provisions of this Act, including the deposit of copies, and upon such compliance the register of copyrights shall issue to him the certificate provided for in section fifty-five of this Act.

(interestingly another version has this as Sec 10 & 11 but with the same wording). Indeed, it seems to bear out that registration is only required when RENEWING the copyright as when it says in SEC. 23 (snip) the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for the further term of twenty-eight years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the copyright office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright (snip).

It's interesting as online articles state that the reason we didn't join the Berne Convention in 1955 but the UCC is because that the US required both registration and affixing of copyright notice but by reading this part of the law, that doesn't seem to be the case. Registration was only a requirement for renewals but the proper affixing of copyright notices was a requirement. This is further spelled out with the 1976 law as well as exceptions that section 405 allowed. So for 1960s Charlton and the 1970s Atlas-Seaboard books, the question would then become one of simply do they conform to the proper copyright notation or under the exceptions? The change in the Law that allowed automatic renewals which these titles fall under seemed to remove any requirement of Registration altogether.

The only way to protect radio scripts and other works where the copies aren't meant to be published for sale/mass distribution at the time though was by registration. This may hold true for ash-can issues of comics as well.

[DennyWilson]

The only way to protect radio scripts and other works where the copies aren't meant to be published for sale/mass distribution at the time though was by registration. This may hold true for ash-can issues of comics as well.

The who purprose of an ash-can was to secure trademarks, but I'm not sure with regards to copyright beyond any original story contained within. Remember, som ash-cans were new cover and title and content was any old comic kicking aound.

[Astaldo711]

That's why there's no Whiz Comics #1. It was Flash Comics.