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Old 05-26-2019, 03:28 AM   #5
solaris72 solaris72 is offline
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Feb 2012
Baltimore, MD
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Some of these are tricky! For example, the film "A Farewell to Arms" may technically be a public domain film, but it's a derivative work. A similar example: the film "It's a Wonderful Life" fell into the public domain, but the studio was able to assert ownership because they owned the rights to the story it was based on. So each individual frame and the elements of the soundtrack would I suppose be considered public domain, but the film in sequence which tells a story derived from the Hemingway novel would still be owned by someone. (Although, barring another legislative intervention by Disney, the novel will fall into the public domain in 6 years.) The Last Man on Earth and the Superman cartoons seem like they would also fall under this category.

EDIT: This is a great idea for a thread and I'm not trying to argue that the films I've mentioned above should be removed from the list.
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