Movies available for free

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jamesf24

New member
Following on from the thread about piracy of movies I decided to see what is in the public domain.

I also checked what determines free status of media, all of this is based on US laws of copyright havn't found the rules for the UK yet.

First a link to a flowchart showing the date copyright runs out, sadly for much I will have to live till 2047 and that would make me 97 years old :)
http://www.bromsun.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/flowchart.htm

Now a link listing public domain movies by date

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_films

David
 
IIRC, the original (1968) version of Night of the Living Dead was subject to some form of paperwork related cock up and was never copyrighted (possibly due to a change in title?)

Due to this, the film quickly lapsed into the public domain, and is freely available for download, and can be distributed by anyone.

(please check this before knocking out your own copies on ebay!)
 
The Public Domain laws affecting titles like Night of the Living Dead,Its A Wondeful Life and many others do not apply in the UK.

It is a US law.

However ,that has not stopped some low budget UK dvd labels from releasing some old films and tv shows that are PD in the US.

The problem is that unless you source from the current official licence holder chances are the quality of the material will be crap anyway.

NOTLD was released in dreadful quality by numerous labels,but the US release from Image Entertainment obtained the original negative from George Romero and is cracking quality
 
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