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Is "Space Thunder Kids" in the public domain? If so, how?

"It Came From Public Domain" apparently did an episode on it, but I don't think that means much.

The Internet Archive also says it's in the public domain, however.

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?

Or do people think it's public domain because other Joseph Lai works have been called that, and they're just transfering that property?

Malady
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  • "The Internet Archive also says it's in the public domain": More likely, the user Ganbachi said that it was in the public domain when they uploaded it, and nobody at the Internet Archive ever checked. Generally IA's policy is to ignore potential copyright infringements until somebody actually complains. – Nate Eldredge Jun 20 '22 at 04:42

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Under US copyright law, "public domain" 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 "being in the public domain", however, there is no convincing evidence that (1) copyright was transferred to the compiler or that (2) the compiler executed any "public domain license" on his derivative work.

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.

user6726
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There is no reason to believe that it is

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.

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.

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.

Dale M
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    If the clips were created and published before 1978, the 1909 US copyright law applies. Under that the death of the author is irrelevant, and the work can enter the public domain in several ways, including publication without a copyright notice, lack of registration, and failure to renew (if prior to 1964). See the famous Cornell chart for details. – David Siegel Jun 20 '22 at 14:04