I'm posting this in Super Forum because it falls under web-site related business. While this subject might be a bit boring to many I wanted to open up a discussion of copyright issues that we might run into in regards to vintage materials relating to our beloved appliances. While I'm certainly not a lawyer and this isn't meant to be taken as professional legal advice in any way shape or form, but it is worthy of a discussion on both sites. This is not meant to target any one person or multiple people on any of our sites as the majority of things that are uploaded and shared on aw.org and vacuumland have been perfectly legal. With that said there have been quite a few times I have had to delete things because of the copyright issue and I'm there were many things that I just didn't see. The most important piece of this whole post of mine is in the last two paragraphs. Most website owners would just hide that information deep in their terms of use. We are more than just a website we are a group of friends here and we want to protect our friends. So here goes...
For the past six months I've taken on a major study of US copyright law as it relates to websites in the United States. My reason for doing this is I'm in the process of creating a major new feature for automaticwasher.org and I want to make sure I don't run afoul of copyright law. The new feature itself is not relevant to this post and I will discuss it further in another post when I'm ready to launch in a month or so. So before I begin I want to be sure that everyone understands I'm only referring to materials that were published in United States and I'm only referring to US copyright law. For our members from other countries, you will have to do some research on your own laws as they do differ greatly from country to country.
Copyright law is simply about whether you have the right to make copies, be it making a Xerox copy, scan a brochure and upload the images to a website, take a photograph of a cover of a owners manual, etc. Many of us like to scan and share our appliance/vacuum sales literature, service manuals and owners manuals. This is great and so much part of the fun of the both websites. The good news is it appears that most of the things that are shared here are perfectly legal and wont cause any trouble because they are in what is called “the Public Domain”. When something is in the public domain it means either it was never copyrighted by the original author/company in the first place, or if it was copyrighted the company has let the copyright expire and the document is now in the public domain. Copyright law is very, very complicated and there is a big difference in copyright duration between printed materials, movies/television video, music and other items. My study only has been on printed materials because that is what can be uploaded to our sites. Yes we can link to or even embed videos right into our posts via YouTube, but copyright of video is YouTube's responsibility since they are hosting the files on their servers that makes it a non issue for us here on aw or vacuumland.
In order to legally upload anything to a website it must be:
<ul>
<li>something you yourself created or;</li>
<li>it must be something that is in the public domain and no copyright is attached to it or;</li>
<li>if it is copyrighted you must have permission from the owner of the copyright of that specific material.</li>
</ul>
I want to concentrate on the following things, appliance/vacuum related printed materials and appliance/vaccum related magazine advertisements and how to generally tell if something is copyright free and safe to upload here or on any website for that matter. In the following guidelines I am only referring to materials that you have an original copy of and you did the scanning or picture taking yourself. If you downloaded it from another website, that means someone else has scanned it and someone else owns the rights to that digital file. If they have an agreement on their website not to use their images without permission then it is not legal for you to upload them even if the original document it was scanned from is safely in the public domain. You must have had an original copy of the public domain document in your possession and make the electronic file yourself in order for it to be completely legal to upload. {SOURCE: The Public Domain by Stephen Fishman copyright 2010, page 241, see ProCD v. Zeidenberg}
Now in order to figure out if something is in the Public Domain the very first thing you need to know is the date the company published the document. Generally for us appliance people that's easy because we are experts in this field, so with that said...
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed before 1923: </span>
It's safe to upload because its in the Public Domain.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between Jan 1, 1923 and Dec 31, 1963: </span>
This one is important because a lot of the stuff we like to share is printed in this time period, especially the 50's and early 60's! In this time period there are two things two check:
#1 Is there a proper copyright notice printed on the document? A proper copyright notice takes one of three forms:
example #1: Copyright 1953 Apex Co.
example #2: © 1953 Apex Co.
example #3: Copr. 1953 Apex Co.
If you find either any of these notices than it was and possibility still is copyrighted. From 1923 to 1963 copyrights lasted only 28 years. Once the copyright has expired its perfectly legal to use it however you wish, including scanning and uploading it. So for our example Apex 1953 copyright, it would have expired in 1981. If Apex desired not to let the copyright expire, sometime in 1981 they would had to have filed for a Copyright Renewal. This would have extended the copyright another 67 years and now that document that Apex copyrighted will now expire in 2048. They absolutely had to do it in the 28th year or the copyright office would reject their renewal. Now obviously it is highly unlikely that any company was going to take the time and expense to renew copyrights on materials for machines that they likely didn't even have repair parts to sell anymore, but to be completely safe you still need to verify this by checking for a renewal. As for how exactly to check to see if a copyright on a particular item was registered or if a copyright renewal was registered, I can post that later if there an interest in learning how to do this.
#2 If you cannot find a copyright notice anywhere on the document with materials published 1923-1963 then most likely it is in the Public Domain and safe to post on the sites. Be careful though, do you just have one or two pages of a 10 page document? If so the copyright notice could have been on a page you don't have. So be sure you have the entire document before you make this assumption.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between 1964-1977: </span>
#1 If you find a valid copyright notice on the document (1964-1977) then it is copyrighted for 95 years from the date of the copyright. So it is illegal to copy the document in anyway. For example, something marked copyright 1971 Kelvinator, Inc. wont be safe to post until 2066.
#2 Again like in the 1923-1964 time slot if you cannot find a copyright notice anywhere on the document with documents published up to the end of 1977 then most likely it is in the Public Domain, but again be careful you are looking at the entire document.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between 1978-March 1, 1989: </span>
#1 Again if you find a copyright notice, its is not legal to post it, it wont be for 95 years from the copyright date.
#2 Be especially careful with stuff published from 1977-1988 if there is no copyright notice found on it, because it could have been a mistake. Before 1978 if you forgot to put the notice on the document, too bad it goes right into the public domain. They changed the law in 1978 to state that the copyright on the document is still valid IF: the notice was missing from a “relatively small number” of copies; or within 5 years after discovering the problem, the company registered the work with the Copyright Office and made “reasonable efforts” to add the notice to new copies; or the notice was omitted in violation of a written agreement stating that the notice had to be included on publicly distributed copies of the work. However, the law does say that Innocent infringers misled by the lack of notice aren’t liable as long as they can prove that they were misled and their copying happened before they discovered that the work was registered with the Copyright Office.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">1989 to present: </span>
If the document was created in 1989 or later then its absolutely copyrighted, all works created after March 1, 1989 are automatically copyrighted and it doesn't need to be marked with a valid copyright notice or even registered with the copyright office. This includes images of modern washing machines you find on the manufacturers websites so it is not legal to copy them and upload them to any website. Of course I realize that millions of copyrighted stuff gets illegally posted to websites such as Facebook, Twitter and thousands of other sites daily. Under most circumstances the people who own the copyrighted materials don't know or don't care, but there have been cases where the person who uploads something illegal gets in trouble.{SOURCE: Google Getty Images Lawsuits} I'm positive this will change for the better over time as copyright law is going to have to be updated for the internet age, but those updates are coming very slowly and the big Hollywood and the Record Labels are going to fight these changes to the death. The push is on and its going to be Hollywood vs. Silicone Valley and its going to be quite interesting.
Some of my sources for the above information concerning copyright duration: Source 1 , Source 2 , Source 3
By the way, just because a company is out of business doesn't mean that its copyright is invalidated. There is no such thing as an abandoned copyright. It still valid in the eyes of copyright law. Also in the case of one company purchasing another (think Whirlpool buying Maytag) the new company now owns all of the old company's copyrights.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Pre-1989 Magazine Advertisements: </span>
Since a lot of us (me included) love vintage magazine advertisements it is important to note that apparently the magazine's own copyright notice (usually printed one of the first few pages of that magazine) was not valid to copyright the advertisements within the magazine. The advertisements themselves must contain their own valid copyright notice. Look at any Sunbeam appliance magazine advertisement in the early or mid 1950's and in many cases you will see a specific copyright notice on the ad itself for this very reason. Sunbeam was one of the few appliance companies in the 50's that I have found that went through the trouble of copyrighting their magazine advertising. But some definitely did and they did not do it consistently so its important to look for it on each and every ad you are considering scanning. {Source: The Public Domain by Stephen Fishman copyright 2010, page 163}.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Sears & Montgomery Wards Catalogs: </span>
The copyright notice in the front of the catalog covers the entire catalog, including the washing machine and vacuum sections. I haven't taken the time to confirm whether Sears and Wards went through the trouble of renewing their copyright in the 28th year, I suspect they didn't but I have to confirm that. Even if they didn't unfortunately that still means that its not legal to upload anything printed in a these catalog after 1963. It appears however that the many of the mid season sales catalogs of these companies were not marked with a copyright notice.
One other thing I want to mention is Trademark Law. Obviously the stuff we love is full of trademarks from the companies. Trademarks law purpose is to help consumers identify the source of goods and services. As long as you are using the trademark in a way that is not considered a trademark for you or your company, then its perfectly legal to use the work. Also you have to be careful not to use another company's trademark in a way the would confuse others that you are somehow representing their company. The supreme court recently ruled in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. (et al., 540 US 806 (2003) ) that a trademarks cannot be used to try to force a perpetual copyright, when a copyright does not exist or has expired. Sources for this: Source 1, Source 2 , Source 3.
Finally and MOST IMPORTANTLY: I want everyone to understand what the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "Safe Harbor Provision" is. If a website owner/operator (meaning me) registers with the copyright office the websites they run (which I did for automaticwasherorg, vacuumland.org and friendsandhusbands.org) and pays $135 (grrrr, did that too) then the website owner is not liable for any copyright infringement that it's members post to their website. In that case the if I'm contacted by a copyright owner or their attorney of an infringement, by law I must immediately take down the uploaded material and provide the copyright owner with the IP address of the person who posted the infringing material from our website log. Obviously this is an extremely rare occurrence for any mom and pop website, but I want to make sure everyone understands the possible risks and the obligation that I am now under. If a website owner does not register and pay the fee with the Copyright Office, then the owner themselves are liable.
I realize this is quite a bit of info to take in, but I just wanted to summarize with everyone what I learned in my quest to run law abiding websites. To sum it up, if you upload something that is copyrighted to any website out there and the owner of the copyrighted item finds out and this owner cares to make a stink about it, you are liable and could possibly be sued. You means you personally, not the website owner or club. While this is very rare, it is possible.
Clear as mud eh? Questions, comments, concerns, corrections?
For the past six months I've taken on a major study of US copyright law as it relates to websites in the United States. My reason for doing this is I'm in the process of creating a major new feature for automaticwasher.org and I want to make sure I don't run afoul of copyright law. The new feature itself is not relevant to this post and I will discuss it further in another post when I'm ready to launch in a month or so. So before I begin I want to be sure that everyone understands I'm only referring to materials that were published in United States and I'm only referring to US copyright law. For our members from other countries, you will have to do some research on your own laws as they do differ greatly from country to country.
Copyright law is simply about whether you have the right to make copies, be it making a Xerox copy, scan a brochure and upload the images to a website, take a photograph of a cover of a owners manual, etc. Many of us like to scan and share our appliance/vacuum sales literature, service manuals and owners manuals. This is great and so much part of the fun of the both websites. The good news is it appears that most of the things that are shared here are perfectly legal and wont cause any trouble because they are in what is called “the Public Domain”. When something is in the public domain it means either it was never copyrighted by the original author/company in the first place, or if it was copyrighted the company has let the copyright expire and the document is now in the public domain. Copyright law is very, very complicated and there is a big difference in copyright duration between printed materials, movies/television video, music and other items. My study only has been on printed materials because that is what can be uploaded to our sites. Yes we can link to or even embed videos right into our posts via YouTube, but copyright of video is YouTube's responsibility since they are hosting the files on their servers that makes it a non issue for us here on aw or vacuumland.
In order to legally upload anything to a website it must be:
<ul>
<li>something you yourself created or;</li>
<li>it must be something that is in the public domain and no copyright is attached to it or;</li>
<li>if it is copyrighted you must have permission from the owner of the copyright of that specific material.</li>
</ul>
I want to concentrate on the following things, appliance/vacuum related printed materials and appliance/vaccum related magazine advertisements and how to generally tell if something is copyright free and safe to upload here or on any website for that matter. In the following guidelines I am only referring to materials that you have an original copy of and you did the scanning or picture taking yourself. If you downloaded it from another website, that means someone else has scanned it and someone else owns the rights to that digital file. If they have an agreement on their website not to use their images without permission then it is not legal for you to upload them even if the original document it was scanned from is safely in the public domain. You must have had an original copy of the public domain document in your possession and make the electronic file yourself in order for it to be completely legal to upload. {SOURCE: The Public Domain by Stephen Fishman copyright 2010, page 241, see ProCD v. Zeidenberg}
Now in order to figure out if something is in the Public Domain the very first thing you need to know is the date the company published the document. Generally for us appliance people that's easy because we are experts in this field, so with that said...
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed before 1923: </span>
It's safe to upload because its in the Public Domain.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between Jan 1, 1923 and Dec 31, 1963: </span>
This one is important because a lot of the stuff we like to share is printed in this time period, especially the 50's and early 60's! In this time period there are two things two check:
#1 Is there a proper copyright notice printed on the document? A proper copyright notice takes one of three forms:
example #1: Copyright 1953 Apex Co.
example #2: © 1953 Apex Co.
example #3: Copr. 1953 Apex Co.
If you find either any of these notices than it was and possibility still is copyrighted. From 1923 to 1963 copyrights lasted only 28 years. Once the copyright has expired its perfectly legal to use it however you wish, including scanning and uploading it. So for our example Apex 1953 copyright, it would have expired in 1981. If Apex desired not to let the copyright expire, sometime in 1981 they would had to have filed for a Copyright Renewal. This would have extended the copyright another 67 years and now that document that Apex copyrighted will now expire in 2048. They absolutely had to do it in the 28th year or the copyright office would reject their renewal. Now obviously it is highly unlikely that any company was going to take the time and expense to renew copyrights on materials for machines that they likely didn't even have repair parts to sell anymore, but to be completely safe you still need to verify this by checking for a renewal. As for how exactly to check to see if a copyright on a particular item was registered or if a copyright renewal was registered, I can post that later if there an interest in learning how to do this.
#2 If you cannot find a copyright notice anywhere on the document with materials published 1923-1963 then most likely it is in the Public Domain and safe to post on the sites. Be careful though, do you just have one or two pages of a 10 page document? If so the copyright notice could have been on a page you don't have. So be sure you have the entire document before you make this assumption.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between 1964-1977: </span>
#1 If you find a valid copyright notice on the document (1964-1977) then it is copyrighted for 95 years from the date of the copyright. So it is illegal to copy the document in anyway. For example, something marked copyright 1971 Kelvinator, Inc. wont be safe to post until 2066.
#2 Again like in the 1923-1964 time slot if you cannot find a copyright notice anywhere on the document with documents published up to the end of 1977 then most likely it is in the Public Domain, but again be careful you are looking at the entire document.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Printed between 1978-March 1, 1989: </span>
#1 Again if you find a copyright notice, its is not legal to post it, it wont be for 95 years from the copyright date.
#2 Be especially careful with stuff published from 1977-1988 if there is no copyright notice found on it, because it could have been a mistake. Before 1978 if you forgot to put the notice on the document, too bad it goes right into the public domain. They changed the law in 1978 to state that the copyright on the document is still valid IF: the notice was missing from a “relatively small number” of copies; or within 5 years after discovering the problem, the company registered the work with the Copyright Office and made “reasonable efforts” to add the notice to new copies; or the notice was omitted in violation of a written agreement stating that the notice had to be included on publicly distributed copies of the work. However, the law does say that Innocent infringers misled by the lack of notice aren’t liable as long as they can prove that they were misled and their copying happened before they discovered that the work was registered with the Copyright Office.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">1989 to present: </span>
If the document was created in 1989 or later then its absolutely copyrighted, all works created after March 1, 1989 are automatically copyrighted and it doesn't need to be marked with a valid copyright notice or even registered with the copyright office. This includes images of modern washing machines you find on the manufacturers websites so it is not legal to copy them and upload them to any website. Of course I realize that millions of copyrighted stuff gets illegally posted to websites such as Facebook, Twitter and thousands of other sites daily. Under most circumstances the people who own the copyrighted materials don't know or don't care, but there have been cases where the person who uploads something illegal gets in trouble.{SOURCE: Google Getty Images Lawsuits} I'm positive this will change for the better over time as copyright law is going to have to be updated for the internet age, but those updates are coming very slowly and the big Hollywood and the Record Labels are going to fight these changes to the death. The push is on and its going to be Hollywood vs. Silicone Valley and its going to be quite interesting.
Some of my sources for the above information concerning copyright duration: Source 1 , Source 2 , Source 3
By the way, just because a company is out of business doesn't mean that its copyright is invalidated. There is no such thing as an abandoned copyright. It still valid in the eyes of copyright law. Also in the case of one company purchasing another (think Whirlpool buying Maytag) the new company now owns all of the old company's copyrights.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Pre-1989 Magazine Advertisements: </span>
Since a lot of us (me included) love vintage magazine advertisements it is important to note that apparently the magazine's own copyright notice (usually printed one of the first few pages of that magazine) was not valid to copyright the advertisements within the magazine. The advertisements themselves must contain their own valid copyright notice. Look at any Sunbeam appliance magazine advertisement in the early or mid 1950's and in many cases you will see a specific copyright notice on the ad itself for this very reason. Sunbeam was one of the few appliance companies in the 50's that I have found that went through the trouble of copyrighting their magazine advertising. But some definitely did and they did not do it consistently so its important to look for it on each and every ad you are considering scanning. {Source: The Public Domain by Stephen Fishman copyright 2010, page 163}.
<span style="font-size: large; color: #008000;">Sears & Montgomery Wards Catalogs: </span>
The copyright notice in the front of the catalog covers the entire catalog, including the washing machine and vacuum sections. I haven't taken the time to confirm whether Sears and Wards went through the trouble of renewing their copyright in the 28th year, I suspect they didn't but I have to confirm that. Even if they didn't unfortunately that still means that its not legal to upload anything printed in a these catalog after 1963. It appears however that the many of the mid season sales catalogs of these companies were not marked with a copyright notice.
One other thing I want to mention is Trademark Law. Obviously the stuff we love is full of trademarks from the companies. Trademarks law purpose is to help consumers identify the source of goods and services. As long as you are using the trademark in a way that is not considered a trademark for you or your company, then its perfectly legal to use the work. Also you have to be careful not to use another company's trademark in a way the would confuse others that you are somehow representing their company. The supreme court recently ruled in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. (et al., 540 US 806 (2003) ) that a trademarks cannot be used to try to force a perpetual copyright, when a copyright does not exist or has expired. Sources for this: Source 1, Source 2 , Source 3.
Finally and MOST IMPORTANTLY: I want everyone to understand what the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "Safe Harbor Provision" is. If a website owner/operator (meaning me) registers with the copyright office the websites they run (which I did for automaticwasherorg, vacuumland.org and friendsandhusbands.org) and pays $135 (grrrr, did that too) then the website owner is not liable for any copyright infringement that it's members post to their website. In that case the if I'm contacted by a copyright owner or their attorney of an infringement, by law I must immediately take down the uploaded material and provide the copyright owner with the IP address of the person who posted the infringing material from our website log. Obviously this is an extremely rare occurrence for any mom and pop website, but I want to make sure everyone understands the possible risks and the obligation that I am now under. If a website owner does not register and pay the fee with the Copyright Office, then the owner themselves are liable.
I realize this is quite a bit of info to take in, but I just wanted to summarize with everyone what I learned in my quest to run law abiding websites. To sum it up, if you upload something that is copyrighted to any website out there and the owner of the copyrighted item finds out and this owner cares to make a stink about it, you are liable and could possibly be sued. You means you personally, not the website owner or club. While this is very rare, it is possible.
Clear as mud eh? Questions, comments, concerns, corrections?
