batman

I am very surprised .... I have bought loads of their stuff over the past few years. Without going into the 'public domain' issue yet again, I have been told that there are 'libraries' in the US which contain titles that are 'public domain' in the US. People such as some ebay sellers and presumably Orbit obtain titles from these 'libraries' and then market them worldwide. I was just wondering if such libraries exist.

Bats.

I wish I had claws.

JamesM

If they are in the public domain in the US, then they are in the public domain here. There are no films that are in copyright in the UK that are not in copyright in the US. Not since 1996.

A lot of eBay sellers will claim that titles they sell are in the public domain but are not. To find these bootlegs on eBay.co.uk, simply Google the phrase "in the public domain" with DVD with the eBay.co.uk domain and you will be hard pressed to find DVDs that only contain material in the public domain. OR you could try the phrase "this is not a bootleg" and DVD to find other bootlegs.

batman

That is interesting because, as you said earlier James, many early Hitchcock titles turn up on low budget US (and Australian) labels and are sold over here. I have seen loads of different versions of The 39 Steps crop up recently and I understood that is licensed to ITV DVD.

Bats

I wish I had claws.