Got this comment / question from my friend April on my “Popular Mechanics” Magazine – 30 Years Worth of Back Issues In The Public Domain article….

Hi Logan,

I know I should be able to work this out for myself with your flowchart for the UK, but as “Popular Mechanics” is a periodical I’m not sure how it would work from the “has the author been dead for 50/70 years” angle.

I have done some research on the search engines but can’t seem to find the answer and would be really grateful if you could tell me whether or not these magazines are also PD in the UK up until February 1932.

Thank you so much for all your help.

April

Hi April,

Actually, this is a great question and the answer deserves some careful thought.

Remember, where U.S. periodicals published between 1923 and 1963 are concerned, you have two things to consider…

First, you have to make sure the magazine as a whole is in the Public Domain. Once you are sure that the magazine as a whole is in the Public Domain, you’re not quite free and clear to use the content from the magazine yet…

You also have to consider the copyright status of any of the articles or photographs / artwork contained within the magazine as well as these things had the potential to be registered and renewed for coyright protection independently from the magazine itself.

In other words, the magazine as a whole may be in the Public Domain, but an individual article from that magazine will still be under full copyright protection if it was registered and renewed seperately.

First and foremost, to make things easier on your end, I would only deal with U.S. published magazines that I knew to be in the Public Domain because no renewal occurred in the 28th year after publication.

As you mentioned, issues of Popular Mechanics published before March 1932 are a good example.

But again…even U.S. based publishers need to verify the copyright status of individual articles from these Public Domain magazines before using for the reasons discussed above.

From a U.K. perspective, when using the spreadsheet and flowchart I provided, you basically treat U.S. published periodicals in the same manner that you would treat U.S. published Books. However, the big difference is that you have to consider the copyright status of BOTH the magazine as a whole AND the copyright status of any individual articles from within that magazine in terms of exactly when they entered the U.S. Public Domain.

Here’s a few simple guidelines…

• For magazine issues published in the U.S. before 1928, if no renewal occurred for either magazine or article ~ then the magazine / article is in the U.K. Public Domain as well thanks to being able to apply the rule of the shorter term.
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• For magazines published in 1928 and after, we start moving into a slightly different area - if both the magazine AND the article you want to use are both in the U.S. Public Domain, that’s a great start but then you have one more factor to consider when determining the article’s copyright status in the U.K. ~ has it been more then 50 years since the author of the article has died?

If it has been more then 50 years since the author has died, then the article is also in the Public Domain in the U.K.

If not, then the article is still technically under copyright protection in the U.K. regardless of it’s copyright status in the U.S.

This is because U.K. copyright law stopped applying the rule of the shorter term at the end of 1956. Magazines and articles published in 1928 and not renewed in 1956 (28 years after publication) entered the U.S. Public Domain on January 1st, 1957. Because U.K. copyright law was not following the rule of the shorter term on January, 1st, 1957, these magazines did not simultaneously enter the U.K. Public Domain and instead we must apply the copyright durations that U.K. copyright law dictated at that time (see Copyright Act , 1956) ~ 50 years after death of author.

The bad news of course, is that it can terribly challenging to determine exactly when the obscure author of an old forgotten magazine article died. In some cases, it may even be impossible to make that determination.

My advice is if you are going to use U.S. published Public Domain magazine material as blog content (especially from mags published after 1927), then just bypass this whole issue to begin with by making sure you are hosting your blog on a U.S. based server.

Hope this made sense and more importantly, I hope it helps.

Let me know if you need more clarification on any of the points above.

Thanks April!

About The Author:

Logan Andrew is an online entrepreneur, information publisher, and author that has been using Public Domain material to create profitable products and businesses since 2001. He is also co-author of "The Public Domain Treasure Hunter's Survival Kit" available here. For more info Logan, click here.

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