Copy right, copy wrong

At the bottom of this blog is a little dissertation on copyright issues, among other items.

As people so often say on the Internet, I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on the web. I can say that I've never had any copyright complaints about anything on this blog. In ten years I've only had one request to take down an image, and it had nothing to do with copyright. (GSN didn't want a photo from the pilot of their Pyramid remake to get out ahead of the debut.)

The reason for my sudden concern with copyright is this thread from Game Show Forum. Of course, the thread is about old game shows...in particular, copyright notices on old game shows. Back in the golden olden days a lot of game shows didn't bother with copyright notices at the end of each episode. One poster suggests that the change to today's more legalistic approach might have happened thanks to a new copyright law in the seventies. Who knows?

In general the copyright status of old TV shows, including our little genre, seems to be a dark and twisted corner of the law. There are no hard and fast rules on what is public domain and what is still under copyright protection. For instance, I've read on the web that a lot of You Bet Your Life is now public domain, but I can't judge the accuracy of these claims.

Doesn't make much difference to me. I'm not planning to broadcast any old game shows any time soon.