public-domain
Is &quot;Space Thunder Kids&quot; in the public domain? If so, how?
<p>Is <a href="https://tvtropes.org/Animation/SpaceThunderKids" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;Space Thunder Kids&quot;</a> in the public domain? If so, how?</p>
<p>&quot;It Came From Public Domain&quot; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9DWwbRT2yA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">apparently</a> did an episode on it, but I don't think that means much.</p>
<p>The Internet Archive also <a href="https://archive.org/details/SpaceThunderKids" rel="nofollow noreferrer">says</a> it's in the public domain, however.</p>
<p>Does it being basically a selection of possibly public domain clips that appear to form no coherent story, not meet enough of a threshold of originality to be creative enough for the product to be non-public domain?</p>
<p>Or do people think it's public domain because <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/publicdomain/comments/7ca56v/is_space_transformer_also_known_as_diatron_5_i/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">other Joseph Lai works</a> have been called that, and they're just transfering that property?</p>

<p>Under US copyright law, &quot;public domain&quot; refers to works no longer protected by copyright law (expired) or US government works. That does not apply to the work in question. There are also licenses which attempt to emulate &quot;being in the public domain&quot;, however, there is no convincing evidence that (1) copyright was transferred to the compiler or that (2) the compiler executed any &quot;public domain license&quot; on his derivative work.</p>
<p>Being a random collection of clips assembled into a film is an art form with the smidgen of creativity required to be a protected work.</p>

<h2>There is no reason to believe that it is</h2>
<p>The assembling of clips into a (bad) movie is a creative work and, if done with the permission of the original creators (or subject to a copyright exemption), is a protected derivative work. If done as a copyright violation, then there is no enforceable copyright in the compilation but the work is still protected by the original copyright if any.</p>
<p>So, for a legitimate derivative work, the work was produced in Japan, a signatory to the Berne Convention, which means it has US copyright protection until 70 years after the author dies. Given that it was released in 1991 we can assume it was made shortly before that by somebody who was not dead. Therefore, it's not in the public domain.</p>
<p>For an infringing work, we need to look at each of the copyrights of each of the ripped-off clips. Unless the people who made those all died before 1952, they are not in the public domain.</p>
