Thank you for the prompt and thorough answer. I so appreciate that you take the time to answer questions.

I’m looking forward to the blog post!

Kim
Kim Gillett´s last blog ..Segmenting- The 1 Sales Technique

Ads in Public Domain magazines ~ I think we have an article about this on here somewhere but basically unlike internal photographs and individual articles, advertisements in mags were required to have their own copyright notice affixed in order to obtain copyright protection. In pre-1963 magazines, if an ad doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s in the Public Domain. If it does have a notice, then it’s protected for 28 years after publication at which point it would have to be renewed to retain protection.

The crazy thing is that you’ll find that most advertisers never bothered to place copyright notices on their ads so you’ll find the majority of them are in the Public Domain. Just be careful about how you reuse ads from well-known companies that are still around today like Kraft. Even if you find a Public Domain Kraft ad, you still want to make sure you don’t reuse the ad in such a way that it potentially violates their trademark protection.

In regards to the plagiarism question, for some reason I’ve had several questions about that over the past week. I’ll adddress that in an article this week on the blog.

Thanks Kim!

You guys rock. My whole online marketing plan is changing rapidly since I discovered your website and bought your kit.

I do have two questions that I haven’t found anywhere.

Are the ads in public domain magazines and newspapers actually public domain? I understand how to check the artwork and articles. But if I like the Kraft ad can I use it?

Is it plagiarism if I use a public domain article and slap my name on without doing any editing? I know you said (and I’m paraphrasing) that we can use the content in any way but does it include that kind of use? Same with images I guess. Do I need to include the illustrator/photographer’s name on the image when I sell it?

Thanks for putting all the effort into this site. I love it!

Kim

If all you are going to do is cut out the ads and such and matte them for a one time sale (one ad at a time of course), there’s no problem with that. If you started reproducing the ads to sell in mass quantities though, then you’d have to make sure that magazines and the ads are in the public domain : )

It’s the same principle as selling a used book on ebay. Nobody is going to tell you you can’t sell your used book on ebay but if you started making copies of that same book to sell over and over again, then you’d have a problem – unless the book is in the public domain of course.

Make sense?

Thanks Shirley!
Logan

Sure you can cut up any magazine and sell it on eBay… in fact Avril Harper shows you exactly how
she has been doing it for years:

http://www.publicdomaintreasurehunter.com/avril-harpers-guide-to-vintage-paper-profits/

Just a quick question. I bought some old Look and Life magazines from the 60’s at a yard sale. They are full of great advertising pictures in particular. Do you think it would be okay for me to cut some of them out and matte them to sell on eBay?

Again, thank you for much.

Shirley