P3D Wonderful Life Copyright

[Marvin Jones <Campfire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Message text written by INTERNET:photo-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I believe Ted Turner tried to copyright the colorized version, and this
was
denied by the copyright office.<

This is not correct. A "colorized" version of a public domain film is
perfectly acceptable for a new copyright, which was the reason behind the
big colorization push of a few years ago. The "trick" used with Wonderful
Life is that, although the film is public domain, the MUSIC SCORE copyright
was renewed, thus giving the owner control over the entire film and causing
anyone not authorized to run it to get sued in recent years. (Presumably if
one could remove the music and rescore the film, they could copyright their
version, but we're getting into the silly zone here.) Similar legal tricks
are becoming rather common as studios scramble to regain control over
public domain films--the movie Rear Window is public domain, for instance,
but the short story on which is was based is still copyrighted, hence the
film is unavailable.


------------------------------