Notes on Peruvian Copyright

 

 In my searching for new material, I came across a curious bit of animation from Peru.

 It's called La alfabetización, una herramienta de liberación or Literacy, a tool for liberation. It debuted in 1971 and was produced by the government to encourage efforts to eliminate illiteracy among the population. I don't think I've seen an animated work quite like it before. 

At that time, Peru was governed by a military Junta calling itself the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.  Not the first, and sadly not the last, time Peru has fallen under the control of military strongmen. This Junta came to power via armed coup in 1968 and ruled until 1980. You may infer from its name that the mix of politics it promoted included strong social policies to address poverty and its ill effects on the population. Hence, initiatives like the animation above.

 The Junta was very active in using mass media to spread its messages, art and cultural works were funded via a mechanism called SINAMOS (National Mobilisation Support System). This raised the question of what this government's attitude towards Intellectual Property was and how that attitude affected current Peruvian culture. At present, Peru uses the life +70 years standard though that was not always the case, there were two major and important legal changes in 1961 and 1996 before that.

As far as I can tell, the Junta maintained the use of the 1961 law. As it stands, it's a little difficult to be certain with multiple legal acts in effect, some of which apply retroactively and some do not. Works that entered the public domain prior to 1971 remain in the public domain. Annoyingly, that's this interesting piece was released just after that. However, I believe this work is still in the public domain as the work was a creation of the government and Peru does not claim copyright on government works. Now, the current government is not the same government as the one that produced this short animation, but it was seen as the legitimate government of Peru internationally and 1968-80 is a long time, recognising it would cause quite a stir and would have to be made clear in the current legislation.

Yippie Mickey

 

A satirical image produced by the Yippies! Youth International Party, a group on the radical fringes of the US New Left in the 60s-70s. The Yippies most famous member was Abbie Hoffman the author of Steal This Book! The Yippies were an eclectic bunch influenced by Anarchism and other anti-establishment ideas.

This gun toting Mickey Mouse is an example of the messaging and propaganda they circulated, though the Yippies were more well known for their street actions and stunts, including running a porcine called Pigasus for President. The image was used to promote calls for action and disruption of Disneyland in 1970, more details on that event can be found at libcom.org. 

Also, you may find this 1968 film produced by the Yippies informative.

Heartbreaking the Worst Company in the World (Allegedly) Just Made an Excellent Point

 

I'll say this for the anonymous artist who worked on this advertising material for the Grumman industrial concern, they did an excellent job with positioning and space.

When I share material older than 1925 I often get asked how it's in the public domain, in this case despite being published material there is no copyright notice present, which was mandated by the US copyright laws at the time.

I'm no fan of the arms industry, in fact over ten years ago I walked away from my plans to pursue a career within it after leaving University. So, its with great frustration that I have to concede that this poster from the 1970s is making an excellent point. The idea behind this buy F-14s advertisement is a concept known as the Security Dilemma, its the major factor for why most nations around the globe spend heavily on defence and offense capabilities, and also how large and well equipped militaries do not in fact lead to a peaceful world by themselves.

The simplest way to think of the Security Dilemma is in the type of scenario presented by this poster, 

1. Cruise Missiles exist and Nation A is building them
2. Nation B sees a potential threat in Nation As Missile capabilities
3. The threat is not deemed serious right now as relations between the two are overall healthy
4. But can the leadership of Nation B guarantee that will always be the case?
5. Nation B decides to look for a counter measure, Grumman offers the F-14
6. Nation A sees the spending on the F-14 program and its counter missile capabilities
7. Nation As leadership is concerned that its Defence policy is now compromised as it relied on its missile capabilities.
8. Nation A looks for ways to counter or by pass the F-14.
9. Nation B sees the expanded military investments of Nation A and becomes concerned, also starts to invest in further weapons programs.
10. Relations start to deteriorate and tensions continue to rise
11. War
     

There's more to international relations than this mechanistic cycle, but it is still an important part of the logic of militarisation. The lack of attention to the Security Dilemma is a major weakness of the pacifist and anti-militarist movements. Much of their argumentation relies on moral arguments, which is understandable, the moral implications of institutions and industries dedicated to the killing of over human beings are as obvious as they are horrific, but this overfocus constrains these movements and limits their potential audiences and strategies of resistance.

They're also heavily constrained by context, I remember the anti-war movements in the UK and Western Europe in the 2000s, they were large and popular since the types of conflicts the UK, France and NATO were involving themselves in were far away and often under the initiatives of their governments. These conflicts were widely seen as aggressive on "Our" part, or at least an overreaction. During the 2010s and especially after 2022 the atmosphere has radically changed and support for military action and spending is much more popular and resistance to it the more marginal. Why? Well now we're all reminded that the "West" is not the sole purveyor of armed strife and repression, their are other powers in the world just as willing and capable of resorting to mass destruction to get their way. Opposing BAE Systems was easy when the news was full of the destruction wrought on Baghdad, its much less so now that the news is full of Russian strikes on hospitals and schools and the ruin of Bakhmut. 

The Security Dilemma is also the main reason why the previously somewhat sucessful strategy of partial demilitarisation won't work in the long run. The organised anti-war movement was somewhat sucessful in getting specific types of weapons of destruction to be seen as taboo and were able to leverage the outrage and disgust over them to get some states to adopt laws and subscribe to treaties that would phase out parts of their stockpiles. Land Mines, Cluster munitions and multiple types of chemical and biological weapons and some Nuclear munitions were after years of blood, sweat and tears from millions of passionate campaigners starting to look like endangered species. But now much of that work may well be undone as recent conflicts demonstrate to all the powers that these horrific tools do have practical applications.

In Syria Assad's regime used chemical weapons to break an rebellion that may well have toppled him. He also heavily relied on aviatian, artillery and Iranian and Russian support but the case studies he ran using Chlorine shells will prove useful in certain circles. The war in Ukraine fought between two nations which have not outlawed Cluster munitions or land mines have demonstrated how militarily useful both can be in certain conflict scenarios. When the United States of America which also has not subscribed to the ban on Cluster munitions started supplying Ukraine with some of its stockpiles the leaders of the governments in Western Europe were grilled quite heavily about the issue for a week. They all just reiterated their official opposition to these weapons and then concluded they could do nothing about it.

The only way to solve the Security Dilemma is to take an approach at the root of the issue. Banning F-14s and their equivalents globally won't effect Cruise Missiles, getting Cruise Missiles scrapped won't touch Tanks or Mortars, nor stop the logic that drives businesses to operate in the arms markets, nor states from investing and supporting these companies and the wider market. If we ever genuinely want to see a world free of F-14s, SU-34s, Elbit produced Drones, AK-47s, Challenger 2s, Mirage Fighter Jets and Scud Missiles, we need to attack their support structure.

The military industrial complex and its ancestors have always been extremely resource intensive and required decades of support and investment to bare fruit. Without the capitalist market and the State system they will not be sustainable. If humanity truly is doomed by nature to a cycle of fratricidal violence (which is not what I believe but others apparently do) than by taking away his toys and the workshops that build those toys will prevent the worst excessises of that nature. Anti-Militarism without a Materialist strategy for resistance will be doomed to ultimate failure.
 

Driller Killer and Drilling Down Public Domain Status

 

Public Domain and horror movies seem to go hand in hand, one of the most well known pieces of media in the public domain is Romero's Night of the Living Dead, whose status and what it meant for cultural expression have become legendary, Zombies as a concept predate Night but the popularity of Romero's work opened up an entire subgenre. 

And Night is not alone, the field of public domain horror is quite crowded. One of the latest entries to fall into the hands of the public is 1979s Driller Killer (DK). The late year of release tells us that this is a case similar to Romero's Night, failure to properly follow the copyright offices requirements. DK is an infamous entry in the slasher killer sub-genre of horror, and was given the honour of being included in the list of "Video-Nasties" in the UK. That designation was supposed to be a mark of shame and drive off consumers from indecent material, but often turned into a mark of fame that increased sales. 

 

Since DK is in the public domain it's very easy to find online, even the wikipedia page includes an upload of the film to view. However, despite or perhaps because of its popularity, DK is occasionally the subject of discussions surrounding the ambiguity of ownership. On trading boards I lurk on it, once in a while someone will pop up asking for confirmation, usually citing a copyright mark on the version they came across. 

I do understand where these questions come from, what these questioners are asking for is an authoritative figure to come down and declare one way or another Yes/No. And unfortunately that just isn't how it works, there is no such authority on the planet. The issue is that essentially when you ask if this thing public domain? You're asking for proof of a negative. And how exactly do you do that? It's easy in contrast to prove the opposite, owners go to court to prove their claim.

Even governmental authorities who oversee copyright and intellectual property legislation will not make such a distinction. I've communicated with the UKs copyright office on several matters, and while they are more than happy to answer queries, they repeatedly make clear that they will NOT under any circumstances weigh in on matters regarding specific works. The US Library of Congress has massive archives of material that are in the public domain, but even that material always carries this disclaimer:

The Library of Congress is not aware of any U.S. copyright or other restrictions in the vast majority of motion pictures in these collections. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.

In rare cases, copyrighted motion pictures are made available by special permission to the Library and may be used only for educational purposes. For example, the Gershwin home movies fall within this category. Rights assessment is your responsibility. No registration information exists for some titles, and reproduction of some titles may be restricted by privacy rights, publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Additionally, some works may still be protected by copyright in the United States or some foreign countries. The written permission of the copyright owners in materials not in the public domain is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions.

Whenever possible, we provide information that we have about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. You should consult the catalog information that accompanies each item for specific information. This catalog data provides the details known to the Library of Congress regarding the corresponding item and may assist you in making independent assessments of the legal status of these items for their desired uses. You should also consult restrictions associated with donations to the Library.

Credit Line: Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.

Bolding mine.

What that says is they don't know but assume that the material they're presenting is no longer under copyright restriction. This is legal cover designed to protect them in case a work is copyrighted, and they've hosted it and the rights holders are angry. And that's the Library of Congress, an institution attached directly to government and with an extensive staff of lawyers and researchers. 

So, if we cannot rely on our leaders for clarity who can we trust? Well, we have to trust ourselves. Intellectual Property is confusing and arbitrary, but there are things we can do to give us some idea. For an example I was once contacted by some documentary maker wanting to know if the 1935 British social film Housing Problems was public domain. To which I replied "there is no source, look at the UKs copyright legislation and its criteria for copyright protection". That's what you have to do in general, figure which is its country of origin, look at the copyright laws in place at the time and then look at current copyright laws in existence today and if the work is of foreign origin look at if your country has a provision like the rule of shorter term (whereby foreign works that are public domain in their home countries are also public domain in yours even if they would not be if they were domestic creations). And there you go.

For DK we have plenty of evidence that it is in fact public domain, DK was made and released at a time when US works required proper copyright notices and a registration that conformed to the requirements of the copyright office of the United States of America. Lots of people get this confused and think a c in a circle was all that was required but no, failure to put a correct notice on the work meant the work lost its copyright protection, but you also needed the correct registration, the copyright office can reject registration applications so it's the registration that is the key determiner. To complicate matters, there was an amendment to US copyright law that gave creators five years to retroactively copyright material, so we're looking at the years 1979-1984, if we look on the US copyright offices' database we do find records for copyright registration of the movie Driller Killer. 

However, the earliest of these is 1991, and there are multiple entries for that year and when we look at them the names of the registrants include Quigley Down Under and Butley who were VHS distributors, who worked internationally. The time span for registration has expired, and none of those entries are listed as renewals of an older copyright. Here, the years of registration count against the film having a copyright, as does the number of entries by different competing businesses. Generally speaking, when you see multiple competing companies offering the same product, that's an excellent piece of evidence that the work they are selling is out of copyright, if you're wondering why that is, there are too reasons. First, if the product is still in copyright these companies would be purchasing or licensing the IP and the whole point of IP is exclusivity, that's how you make money off a product, no one else is legally allowed to exploit IP you own. It just doesn't make business sense to license a product to then compete in a crowded market. Second, if the product is in copyright, what these companies are doing is illegal, and they've created a strong paper trial to the material steps they've taken in their crime. The man selling pirate DVDs in pub car parks can disappear when the heat turns up, but it's a lot harder to hide bulk orders and shipping of products you're actively advertising that you have.

 The above is good practice in general, but for Driller Killer in particular there is even more evidence we can look at. DK is an independent horror movie, now when we see the word independent or indie and the movie in question looks made on a limited budget we often assume It's made by an amateur on a shoestring and who may not have been aware of the legal niceties regarding contracts and rights, but that isn't so with DK. The Director and Driller Killer of Driller Killer is Abel Ferrara, Ferrara has made and released many films before and since DK and is still alive and working today. As far as I am aware, all the other movies in his catalogue are in copyright, if DK belonged to anyone it would be him, and yet there is no evidence that Ferrara has made even an attempt to prove that the film did in fact qualify for copyright, there is no court case nor press releases stating this. 

To compare this with another late 70s public domain slip up A Boy and his Dog, Harlan Ellison spent years trying to argue that the film was in fact copyrighted to him, but at no point did he provide any legal proof, and eventually he gave up talking about the film at all. If there is an owner of DKs IP out there, they've been quiet for decades and the onus is on them to prove their claims.

1972 IWW convention keynote speech by Frank Cedervall

 

The transcript of a 1972 speech by Frank Cedervall, who was involved in the IWW during the 1930s-1950s.

Frank Cerdervall – Keynote Speech, IWW Convention 1972

September 7th

A man came into the IWW. And he began to interrogate the fellow worker. He said, “Nell, have you heard our speakers?” “No, me no hear the IWW speaker.” “Have you read the preamble?” “Me no hear the Preamble.” “What do you know of Karl Marx?” “Who is he, a tailor?” “Nell, why do you want to join the IWW?” he said “Because I heard the IWW fucks with the boss all the time.” This is the answer, a simple answer. That’s why the employing class has hated the IWW. And that’s why you young men and women in this organisation coming up, some of you may have been tempted by this Socialist Workers Party and these are the people who give you suave, intelligent, well educated people with five or six PHD degrees to lead you out of the wilderness. It’s going to take the dishwashers, the bricklayers, the carpenters and the wage workers to make the revolution. And once you get that in your head and understand that, we’ll get somewhere.

I’m going to take a little more time than I usually take, because brevity is the success of a speaker. The longer you talk, they say, “why won’t the asshole sit down?” There was a young man who came to my house through the good offices of fellow worker Thompson. A young fellow named Roy Wortman. He wanted to write a doctoral dissertation, and many of you are in the academic community, and know how hard it is to find something to write about that hasn’t been covered before. So the only way that you can really get somewhere at all is to try to look up some esoteric problem that hasn’t been dealt with deeply. And this fellow worker, this young man, stopped in to see Fred Thompson and he wanted to write about the Colorado strike. And Fred said “well, why don’t you go down to Cleveland and visit Frank Cedervall for awhile, and talk about the Cleveland IWW drive?”

He wrote a letter, the other day and he sent me a copy of a report that I never knew that I had ever written, because I don’t keep a file. And if I haven’t lost it, I brought it up here with me, somewhere. Now that would be the asshole of the world if I did that, that’s it. A lot of people say the world has changed, in thirty years things are different, it’s not the world of 1905. As long as capitalism exists, as long as one man exploits another at the point of production, things are the same. We have a system that needs to be destroyed and it can only be destroyed by organising on the job. And would you believe it or not from 1934 until 1952, that’s only 20 years ago, don’t look in the back of the history of the IWW, in 1952 there were 1,200 organised members of the IWW in the city of Cleveland. And there can be 1,200 hundred more members of the IWW, 12,000 members of the IWW. How simple it is. And I’m going to read, with your permission, “There is no doubt but what Cleveland and its 440 activities has caused widespread comment among IWW members throughout the country. No complete picture of our two years of activity has ever been drawn. And because such a picture is needed, I’m taking the liberty of attempting to present an outline of our achievements and failures that, will give you a conception of what has taken place in Cleveland and what can be hoped for in the future.” This is 1935, I just got this, now this is a strange thing I bring to the convention. Now this man, I don’t know, he must have researched his ass off to find it. How in the hell he dug it up I don’t know, he says, “The Cleveland drive began in late January of 34.” At that time the membership consisted of a well grounded group of Hungarians in the GRJ branch and a few Finnish fellow workers. We had no chartered branch, they were small in numbers, but they enthusiastically began to raise funds for a drive. That’s one thing we had to do- find out who in the hell believes in the revolution enough to dig down into your pocket to pull out a buck.

And these Hungarian fellow workers dug down and they dug up this money. The organisation spent most of its energy in January, February and March distributing mimeographed leaflets at various plants, just as the fellow workers in Portland are doing. You see how important it is? But very small results were obtained. But one of the moulders at the Buckeye Brass Company came over and mentioned that in one division of the Ohio Foundry there were workers who were dissatisfied and we leafleted that place, and we organised the workers and had them out on strike and 100% organised job control.

Now I want to talk to you about another problem, and I’m not going to read this whole thing. You might be interested, and I don’t want to lose your attention. We have what we call infantile leftism in the labor movement. This is a thing that Lenin spoke about, Super-radicals. And so in the height of McCarthy hysteria, the United States government passed a law stating that if you would not sing a non-communist affidavit you were not eligible for the services of the National Labor Relations Board. And I want you to mark this, and mark it well. We came here, we members of the IWW out of Cleveland, with job control, with action that we had fought and died for. One man spent years in the penitentiary, another fellow worker did three years in the pen. And men sat at the IWW convention in 1952 with AFL cards in their pocket. And they worked under AFL’s dictatorship, and said, “it’s alright for the AFL to sign the non-communist affidavit, but I’m not going to permit the IWW, my pure union to do so.” This is what is called leftism. Because the power of the working class is on the job, we have to get out into the industries.

Have you ever seen a picture like the one in England that occurred just a few weeks ago where those stevedores on the docks had the country in turmoil? For God’s sake they were dumping tomatoes all over the place. The government was distraught, frantic. And then the government and the leaders of the union in England conspired together. And when they made a settlement the police had to protect the leaders from the wrath and anger of the workers. This is the power, this is where its at, this is where we’ve got to go. And there are people in the IWW, if I didn’t know, if I hadn’t learned on this tour that I made through the West coast, that there were young men and women who understand this principle, I wouldn’t have wasted my time to come to your, to our convention.

There is jealousy or even worse, you can see it coming. How do you explain that you’re here? Why aren’t you over there with the Socialist Workers Party? Why aren’t you out there working for comrade McGovern? You’re here because you understand this simple principle. That when the organised power of the working class becomes stronger than the organised power of the capitalist class, then and only then will the workers rule the world. As one fellow worker, James P. Thompson said, everytime that he spoke he said it. He repeated time and time again. And read the pamphlet they turned out; it gives you the whole story.

Now in conclusion, I’m going to repeat a phrase I repeat time and time again. And I borrow the words from Peter Kropotkin, he said that we soldiers who blindly obey the commands of the generals, who are good enough to command us, we have but to make an about face to see a deathly pallor over their faces. And we peasants who mumble the chaff while the master eats the wheat, we too are a goodly number. And we workers who are like grains of sand, we overflow the streets and squares like a sea at full tide, when the factories clamour gives a moments repose. If we but had the will to do it, that very instant, justice will be done. This is the power. Here is what it is and keep your all your tomes, all your diplomas. Go back to Harvard and get six more degrees, I don’t give a shit where you go or how you go.

If you want a working class revolution you must build a union, a union that is not organised because our ideas are the same, because we cannot organise ourselves with similar ideas. We have certain needs. We organise for our need. And our needs are to grab control of the max of production, to build power to change the world where generals and politicians and prostitutes of various sorts are not going to ride our backs anymore. So, do not be discouraged fellow workers, get out there in the industries and build the IWW; build the one big union of the working class. This is the thing that I know that you’re talking about. We are old, our day is done. But we old timers are with you. And out of your group right here in this very convention there are people with the possibilities and the capabilities to do the job. I thank you very much.

1975: A Boy and His Dog

 

Video link

Don Johnson plays a young man in a post nuclear war world who has an interesting friend, a telepathic dog. The dog gives him an advantage in dealing with the barbaric world he lives in. When Johnson finds one place that has escaped the devastation of the war, he also finds some rather odd attitudes.

When I discovered a Boy and his Dog were listed in several collections of public domain works, I hardly believed it. Not only is it very recent, but it was an adaption of a novella by Harlan Ellison, who was actively involved in the film's promotion and reception. Ellison was notorious as a militant defender of author intellectual property rights, and wasn't shy about fighting against even the possibility of a violation of it. So to find out that no one on the production and distribution side of this movie bothered to officially register it is genuinely surprising. The earliest record of a copyright application is for the VHS release of the movie in the 1980s. So yes, the film is in the public domain, despite the attempts by Harlan and the studio to keep control of it, the film is out there and can be watched, edited, remixed parodied etc.

The film was released in 1975 which was just a few years before US copyright reforms made copyright automatic at the point of completion as in the rest of the world. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is a famous similar case, though Romero did register it for copyright, he forgot to attach the copyright notice to the film when he released it, which voided the copyright. There are quite a few American media projects that are in the public domain for similar reasons. And many works didn't have their copyright renewed for one reason or another. This is the first time I've encountered a major movie with serious backing that forgot to even submit the application.

As a result, the movie is easier to find than the original novella. The movie was a critical success but box office failure, but it did generate enough interest in the concept that Ellison launched several other spin offs. And like how sharing the Living Dead spurred on creative works involving zombies, a Boy and His Dog was very influential in apocalyptic science fiction, Mad Max and the Fallout franchise have clear connections to pick the most obvious. 

This poster owns.