I know that this is a Commons question but in my experience the Commons list doesn't have as many people who are familiar with or care about US copyright law. So I'm posting it here. There are a lot of stills from US movie trailers on Commons. Example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes_Movie_Trai… The movies they are from are in almost every case still copyrighted (you can look up the renewal records pretty easily). The entire rationale that the trailers are in the public domain comes from the dubious argument on this website that the trailers constitute entirely separate copyrights since they are "published first" and weren't explicitly copyrighted or renewed: http://www.sabucat.com/?pg=copyright Personally I find this pretty dodgy reasoning (and not written in a way which gives me any faith that said site actually got solid legal advice on the issue). There is no case law on the subject that I have been able to find (though my effort in such was not great -- a few Google searches turned up nothing obvious, nothing that was being cited by others). This seems like definitely murky area and certainly not clear cut. I would be surprised, personally, if a US judge did not see the trailer as being a derivative work of the film itself, even if it is exhibited before the films themselves. Some back-and-forth on a media list serv seems to support at least the point of view that this is pretty murky legal ground: http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2008/07/msg00124… Do we think this reasoning is sound enough for the "freedom" of Commons (and Wikipedia)? Personally I think not. I am not a lawyer, but it's clear to me that without any case law on the subject we are probably not justified in saying that these are in the public domain. And no, I'm not really worried about Commons or Wikipedia getting sued over it (no more than I am worried about getting sued over fair use screenshots). But Wikimedia getting sued is obviously not the border of "free". I'm not being copyright paranoid -- I just don't want Commons (and by extension, Wikipedia) advertising certain things as PD if they might not be. If I were actually staking any financial resources into this particular question, I'd definitely need to consult a lawyer first. And if that's the case, then it's probably not free enough for Commons. So goes my reasoning. I've nominated one of the screenshots (the one I linked to above) for deletion on Commons as being non-free (or at least, that we have insufficient reason to assert freedom). Feel free to participate in that, either way. If it does get deleted, though, there are at least 350 other such images on Commons (do a site-specific search for the sabucat page). I'm not going to be spending any more time on this particular issue -- it's just something I noticed and thought I'd put out there. And I think it's an area where some people who are relatively well-informed on US copyright law could be useful. FF _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l