14 DAY TRIAL // As recent events such as Viacom suing Google's YouTube or Virgin Media sending out 800 warning letters have shown, the entertainment industry does not take copyright infringement very lightly. But how can a simple user figure out which material is copyrighted and which is in the public domain. The ALA (American Library Association) has thought of this inconvenience and in order to keep you out of trouble it has come up with a simple to use Digital Copyright Slider.
The ALA has recently added a new tool to its already large collection, one that allows anyone to figure out if a movie, song or book is copyrighted or not. Michael Brewer from the University of Arizona has come up with this fairly simple to use Flash applet which is licensed under Creative Commons and can be adopted in countries all over the world.
According to the digital slider, anything that was published, recorded, or shot before 1923 is not copyrighted, so if you want to spread such media around, you are not breaking any laws. Things get a bit more complicated in regard to media published between 1923 and 1977. If such media was published without a copyright notice, then they are in the public domain. But they may be protected up to 2018 if a copyright notice has been issued and was renewed 28 years after the time of publication.
Recently the ALA Council has passed a resolution regarding the preservation and accessibility to sound recordings made before April 1972. "Unlike books, paintings, photographs and other creative works, sound recordings are technology dependent, so that if a pre-1972 sound recording is not reissued in a contemporary format (digital file or compact disc), the content is generally not accessible to the public or scholarly community," says the resolution.
The simple truth of the matter is that as media becomes easier and easier to share, copyright infringement can always occur. It is important that you stay informed so as to avoid a very public and very costly trial.