1932 Reign of the Supermen

[turoksonofstone]

 Reign of the Supermen the original Siegel and Shuster story. Is it Public Domain? Or does DC somehow own it?

[Yoc]

No idea there T but I seriously doubt we'll be sharing it.
Too risky IMO.

[John C]

DC almost certainly wouldn't have any ownership stake (why would they?), but there are two hurdles I can envision, which would require more research than just knowing the story is there.

First, if the story or whatever it was published in--"zine," for lack of a more period term, I guess--had a copyright notice, then it was automatically renewed and extended.

Second, if the "zine" wasn't easily available, the Copyright Office might not consider it "published" in the technical sense.  In that case, it would have a Life+70 copyright term.

In either of those cases, it'd be controlled by the Siegel and Shuster estates, rather than DC.  So using it wouldn't be so much "stickin' it to the Man" as "stickin' it to people who the Man stuck it to."

[Roygbiv666]

Just curious, why would it be automatically renewed/extended?

Can you expand on the "Life+70" idea?

DC almost certainly wouldn't have any ownership stake (why would they?), but there are two hurdles I can envision, which would require more research than just knowing the story is there.

First, if the story or whatever it was published in--"zine," for lack of a more period term, I guess--had a copyright notice, then it was automatically renewed and extended.

Second, if the "zine" wasn't easily available, the Copyright Office might not consider it "published" in the technical sense.  In that case, it would have a Life+70 copyright term.

In either of those cases, it'd be controlled by the Siegel and Shuster estates, rather than DC.  So using it wouldn't be so much "stickin' it to the Man" as "stickin' it to people who the Man stuck it to."

[JVJ (RIP)]

"Life+70 years" is the current extent of a copyright, Roy. It lasts for 70 years after the death of the creator. All of this fiddling with the 28 years + 28 years that once was started to occur in the mid-1970s, just about when Mickey Mouse was about to go into the Public Domain. Welcome to the copyrighted future. It's unlikely that anything we now know about will enter the PD in our lifetimes.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[John C]

I zoned out on the automatic renewal.  We'd need to know where to hunt for the renewal, but it wouldn't be automatic.

As Jim says, Life+70 is the modern copyright term (everything post-1978), to "harmonize" with the various European-ish laws (that's the current excuse--they call it "policy laundering," forcing a lousy law into somewhere nobody cares about and then using it as leverage on everybody else).  However, that's also retroactive for unpublished works.

If, for example, you buy a lot at auction that includes someone's private correspondence or a draft for a book, you best not distribute it unless the author has been dead for seventy years.

[Roygbiv666]

There's an online copy here:

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00077088/00001/1j

University of Florida site.

[John C]

True, and it's possible I even knew that, once...

http://www.writeups.org/fiche.php?id=2041

(There's no date, but I haven't contributed to the relevant discussion list in probably close to ten years.)

It's still a shot in the dark as to whether it fits the bill for "published."  I might be willing to make an argument for yes, but with such a small community teenage science fiction fans in 1933 could have accessed, without documentation (like someone who can say they didn't know Siegel or Shuster and had the opportunity to buy a copy), it's only a guess, and one that a clever enough lawyer can still deny successfully.

[skybandit]

Anything published in 1932 that doesn't have a copyright notice is public domain.   This doesn't, so it's PD.

[John C]

As I said, that may be the case, but only if it was available in such a way that a court would define as "published."  If it wasn't, unpublished works, no matter when you saw them or heard of them, have copyrights either from when they were first acceptably published or Life+70 if not otherwise.

[narfstar]

I think that existing in the form it does the argument for being published would be easy to show. Bring it over to CB+ and it will probably be housed. It will at least be examined for inclusion

[John C]

I think you're misunderstanding.  Published doesn't mean printed or that you've seen it.  It means--and it's a probably-intentionally vague definition--that it was made available for distribution to a wide audience of people the author didn't already know.  This being a very early fanzine created by high school kids, I'd be concerned that they ran off a few dozen copies for friends, for example.

[turoksonofstone]

http://archive.org/details/ReignOfTheSuperman

Just a general FYI: archive.org shares the 1932 story in several forms and also says it is from "Science Fiction: The Vanguard of Future Civilization" Vol. 1 No. 3. Jan. 1933
and that this was a home produced zine edited by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. I understand DCM will not host it and respect that.

[Yoc]

Interesting.
Thanks for the link T.

[mr_goldenage (RIP)]

It was also printed or reprited I guess in a fanzine/comic journal type magazine during the late 1970's/early 1980's. I have the mag buried in a white box out in the garage somewhere. Wasn't all that interesting really other than from a historical perspective. Something that Roy Thomas would have dug the poo out of. There was a "Pre" Batman  thing a while back too if I remember correctly not a story just art and some sort of "direction". Can't say that I remember much else at the moment.

Richard @ Home