Re: ads in pulp fuction magazines

On 08/26/1999, Stephen Fishman <sfish55[_at_]yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Tamika Hughes <hughes[_at_]mail.temple.edu> wrote:
> >
> > We hope to reproduce some ads from some "pulp fiction" magazines.
> > The magazines themselves are either public domain (i.e. copyrighted
> > before 1923 if copyrighted at all) or fair use (whether or not the
> > pulp fiction magazines of the 1920's were copyrighted, the publishers,
> > in any case, no longer exist). If copyright is controlled by the
> > ad supplier and not the magazine, we still would not need to seek
> > permission because there are no copyright notices printed on the ads
> > themselves, so under the 1909 copyright act (as I understand it),
> > the ads are then public domain. Is this correct?
>
> Pulp fiction magazines of the 1920's were copyrighted if they were
> published with a copyright notice. But you're right. Magazine ads
> published before 1978 without a separate notice are likely in the
> public domain. Another grounds for their being PD is nonrenewal of
> their copyright. You have to check Copyright Office records to see
> if the advertisers filed renewals for their ads 28 years after they
> were published (they likely didn't).

I have done a lot of work with pulp magizines and researched a lot of copyright issues. My basic findings are that the magizine as a whole was copyrighted in the name of the publisher. Therefore, most of the stories, the artwork in mag, and yes probably even the ads, were copyrighted by the publisher (Many famous authors started out in the pulps -- Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Bloch was the first that I can recall to have separte registrations in his own name. Tennesse Williams, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, and others had to be assigned back the rights to their own stories.) I also note that many, many of the copyrights on these pulps were never renewed. My advice would be to contact the Copyright office and have them run a search on the issue of the pulp itself.

But on a side note, don't ya just love the smell of them?

Rob Jones
<rjones[_at_]robjob.com> Received on Fri Aug 27 1999 - 13:16:15 GMT