Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5154975-20140830155800/@comment-1916997-20141229220659

Hmcooper4 wrote: I forget the exact copyright laws (and of course it can vary from country to country), but if I recall correclty, according to US law, the author/creator of a work maintains the rights to the work for the duration of his/her life, plus another 70 years after death, before it is considered Public Domain. So pretty much anything published  during the late 20th Century would require negotiation with whomever owns the rights. Works published and registered during the early-mid 20th century have some very complicated regulations. Works from prior to WW1 are pretty much guarenteed to be public domain at this point. beyond that, no guarentees. Besides all that, whenever a movie is made from a book, they also gets some rights. For example, Wizard of Oz, the book is 1990, the movie is 1939, but they have the witch's skin color and ruby slippers because they made those aspects, so Once for example couldn't use the same shade of green or ruby slippers without paying MGM or getting sued.