Companies Using DRM on Public Domain Material

[pjay]

What's the feeling of Doom9 when some company uses DRM on Public Domain Material. For example AOL using it on the Fleischer Superman cartoons through Hi-Q. I've got to tell you these are some of the best prints I've ever seen of it. I've seen this on those cheap crappy DVD's they sell at discount stores, but these are much better. Sorry I'm new to the board if this is against the rules then I didn't understand them when I was reading them. The only way I can think that this would be trademarked is if these prints came off a master held by Warner Bros themselves or if Time Warner's other subsidary DC Comics decided to use there ownership on Superman to copyright these cartoons.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

How did you determine that these cartoons are in the public domain?

[pjay]

The fact that there avalible on alot of sites that countain Public Domain Related material like archive.org also the fact that they've been released on about 5+ different DVD's (All of them done by different companies and not one of them Warner Bros yet) and the Wikipedia page has links to the sites with the cartoons themselves for download. Just Google "Max Fleischer Superman cartoons"

[Mug Funky]

it's possible it's off a restored version that has copyright on it... but i'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way to be honest. unless something was added to the materials i don't think they should be using DRM

[Zarxrax]

When something is in public domain that means anyone is free to do anything they want with it. This means if someone wants to slap drm on it, they can. This also means that if someone wants to take the work and burn it to dvds and sell it on streetcorners, they also can.

However, as Mug Funky said, if they have done a restoration or changed it somehow, it may be possible that they have a copyright of the restoration. So in relation to what I said above, although someone could take the general work and sell it on streetcorners, it may not necessarily be legal to do that with a specific version of the work that has been released by someone else (at the very least, their dvd menus would be copyrighted).

[Doom9]

This is where the broadcast treaty comes in.. on one side we extend copyright until forever, on the other we can "re-copyright" public domain material by broadcasting it.. and before we know, there's no such thing as public domain anymore.

[Lokean]

That's why stuff shouldn't be released into the public domain, but with a free license, such as the GPL or GFDL.