Quick question

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

In dealing with Golden Age stuff, where the stories are short and the page count is high, how many pages of a comic can we post? Let's say the story is 8 pages long, and the comic is, say, 60 or so?

Hell, or Seuss? You decide.

Comments

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

This is Hell: http://www.fema.gov/kids/wytookie1.htm

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Well, it's definitely not Seuss.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; argh, now I wanna post some Seuss.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

I'm not stoppin ya. It's serial art, innit?

[crinosg.insanejournal.com]

Oh that's charming; FEMA is trying to appeal to kids.

I can't wait to see their next project for kids: "Why did mommy have to drown?"

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Well, Seuss is pictures with words, and each relies on the other for the story to be told.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Seriously, I have enough stuff to do a good series, but I don't know how close to 'legality' for purposes of the journal it is. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it's... probably public domain by now.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Shades of "Now we are Sick", the "anthology of nasty verse" that the likes of Pratchett and Gaiman contributed to.

Or that Hellraiser story I posted last Halloween with the faux nursery rhyme that summoned the Cenobites...

GOLDEN AGE

[peur_evol.insanejournal.com]

The longest full story I've ever posted here was 8 pages long, but i've seen some golden age Batman that were up to 12 pages.
The mods seem really nice here, as far as I can tell, it would be up to your own discretion.
If you have proof that it's actually public domain, then post as much as you want (it's legal); if you're not sure, condense as you see fit.

Overall, if you're really not sure, contact a mod.
Hope this helps.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

Copyright is life of the author + 70 years. For it to be public domain, the author would have had to have died in 1968.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Only mostly true. If the copyright had not entered the public domain by 1978, then what you're saying is more or less true.
If, however, before 1978, then, if it was published before 1923, it is public domain. If, however, it was published _after_ 1923, but _before_ 1978, and a renewal notice had not been filed with the US Copyright Office in the 28th year of its copyright, before the need was removed in '92, it is public domain. Thus, works whose copyright had not been renewed, and were published before 1964, are in the public domain.

(Of course, there's weird areas, like how Night of the Living Dead (1968) is public domain due to a screwup.)

A lot of Golden Age stuff is public domain because nobody bothered to renew.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Copyright is life of the author + 70 years.

Not the case for comic books, and CERTAINLY not for Golden Age comic books.

That rule (the number's wrong, though - it's currently 95 years, plus the math is wrong - 2008-70 is 1938) applies only to works to which the author holds the copyright. Comic books are generally* work for hire material, the copyright owned by the company that commissioned the work.

Golden Age comics will fall under one of two groups - stuff that was never renewed - and thus fell into PD in the 50s or 60s - and stuff that WAS renewed, so was still in copyright in 1978, but, being work-for-hire, fall under a copyright term starting with publication, not connected to the author's time of death. 75 years from publication, under the 1976 rules, 95 under the current rules (introduced in 1998).

So, anything produced before October 1923 (75 years before the Sonny Bono act came into effect) is out of copyright. And anything produced after that - which didn't fall into public domain due to lack of renewal before the 1976 rules were implemented in 1978 - will start falling into the public domain in 2018. Anything created before 1950 from a company that went defunct before 1977, is possibly, though not guaranteed to be**, in public domain.

* Indies, Underground, and Creator Owned are the exception, not the rule, and, assuming the copyright goes to a person, not a company they created to control the work, fall under the 'author's death+' rule.

** Obviously, the originating company couldn't have renewed their copyright, but somebody could have bought the company's properties, and renewed themselves.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Exactly. In this case, I got some Whiz comics, and I feel like sharing some non-Captain Marvel... though there's one long Captain Marvel versus the Muslim Extremists one that I think it hilariously appropriate for today... it's surprisingly nuanced for a '40s comic, anyhow. It's long, but it's almost certainly less than a third of the book with minor snippage, but do I trim down a 60+pager to 20 pages or to 1/3rd the story? For that matter, what if I feel like sharing something from a 100 Page Comic from the 60s?

With Whiz, I'm _prrrrrreeeettty_ sure the copyright wasn't renewed, but I'm not sure.

FAWCETT

[peur_evol.insanejournal.com]

Sharing for free is OK.
From what I understand (because I looked into this, as well), DC owns the rights to Fawcett/Quality/Red circle/etc. CHARACTERS.
So you couldn't publish any SpySmasher stories and sell them.
However, DC does not own the rights to every STORY that was ever published.

Additionally, DC has blatantly raped some golden age defunct publishers; they actually DON'T own Phantom Lady (nobody does). From what I understand, they didn't purchase Hoppy The Marvel Bunny, either, 'tho they've considered him to belong to them as part of the SHAZAM! family.

Just my two cents. I'm taking it that Kamino_Neko is the one with the real booklarnin'.

Re: FAWCETT

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Well, I've got a bit of it. The question is regards to how the rules of the journal resolve around this specific case, as well as the 100 Pager case where it is still under copyright.

Re: FAWCETT

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

I'm taking it that Kamino_Neko is the one with the real booklarnin'

I should note I'm not a copyright lawyer, or anything of the sort - due to being a lit. major in university, and wannabe writer, I've ended up needing to know something of this stuff, and have read a lot I didn't need just because it's interesting to me, but it's not my speciality.

they actually DON'T own Phantom Lady (nobody does)

And the founder of Americomics is really grumpy about how that whole thing went.

[tavella.insanejournal.com]

Could we maybe have a looser set of rules for, say, stuff that is 50 or more years old? Because a good bit of it is PD anyway, and even the stuff where they got around to renewing the copyright is pretty much inaccessible to the ordinary reader.

Re: FAWCETT

[his_spiffyness.insanejournal.com]

Bill Black is kinda grumpy about a lot of things from what I saw on his message board. He went as far as saying that Alan Moore never had an original idea in his life.

Re: FAWCETT

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Well, he is technically a fanficwriter.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Just a personal feeling, I think it's best to keep some brevity in the scans. Or cut it up into multiple posts.

Re: FAWCETT

[gwalla.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

That's pretty funny coming from a guy whose work is all drawn directly from public domain golden age characters, usually in mild cheesecake form.

[lbd_nytetrayn.insanejournal.com]

How about stuff from other companies that are out of business? I'm referring specifically to Valiant's comics from the 90's, the Nintendo stuff specifically.

Y'know, should I get the time to post more.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Oooh. Ninjak!

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Ah, but then I gotta scan it, and I hate scanning. It sucks.

[raattgift.insanejournal.com]

My take on this question has practically nothing to do with copyright law at all, for once.

I want free comics as much as the next person (possibly more, given some of the trolls that have shown up here), but scans_daily is not the place to get them, and never has been. If you really like a comic, you can probably find it elsewhere with a little bit of search-fu, no matter what your take on copyright happens to be.

What's interesting in s_d is the discussions in which the images are embedded. Yes, sure, some individual images or series of images might be more interesting to some than the conversations they're in, but even in its wildest days, old!s_d on the whole was not fullscans_daily, which was one place you could go to get a whole issue or book in scanned form. s_d is where you went for the innuendo, the snark, the love and the hate, with the images for ease of reference when making a point rather than as a substitute for a whole issue you're interested in reading.

Think of the page limit in the way you would think of an assignment to write a pr&esharp;cis, abstract, short story or article with a strictly limited word count, and make something interesting or squeeable that is at -- or under! -- the scans-per-issue limit.

If you are in favour of Jolly Roger raising with shouts of Yarrrrr -- or if you are the opposite -- you might consider subtle ways of helping people find full(er) versions, whether that means scanned or printed and bound by the publisher itself. People have certainly pointed out availability of TPBs on Amazon or Ebay in the past; most of us already know about TPB vs the LCS, and have discussed Tales of The Latter elsewhere. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

So does everyone else know what this is from? I'm not seeing any tags.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Mysterius the Unknown #3. I forgot how to tag things.