Digital Comic Museum

General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: hufflepuffle on May 24, 2019, 04:05:36 PM

Title: Are comic strips like Shinbone Alley characters and Krazy Kats public domain?
Post by: hufflepuffle on May 24, 2019, 04:05:36 PM

Hi,
This question is for the knowledgeable staff or mod here. Whether some famous very old comic strips such as Archie and Mehitabel and Krazy Kats are public domain? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat)

Title: Re: Are comic strips like Shinbone Alley characters and Krazy Kats public domain?
Post by: SuperScrounge on May 24, 2019, 06:56:27 PM

Supposedly everything printed in the USA before the year 1923 should be Public Domain.

I am not a lawyer however, so this is not legal advice, just information that comes up doing an internet search.

Title: Re: Are comic strips like Shinbone Alley characters and Krazy Kats public domain?
Post by: Yoc on May 24, 2019, 07:50:29 PM

Newspaper strips are a real bugger for checking HP.
JohnC writes about that in the FAQ section here:
https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php?topic=3778.0

I'd think Archie and Mehitabel are PD but I'm not sure on Krazy Kat. 
To be safe I would say DCM would likely not share Krazy Kat.

NOTE - any of these shared here would have to come from original newspaper sources and not from later reprints which would still be under copyright to their publishers.

-Yoc

Title: Re: Are comic strips like Shinbone Alley characters and Krazy Kats public domain?
Post by: SuperScrounge on May 25, 2019, 08:10:48 PM

The pre-1923 strips of Krazy Kat should be okay. (Again, not a lawyer.) It's just the post-1923 strips where someone might have renewed the copyright that could be a problem.