Under US copyright law of 1978, the copyright stays
with the creator of the material for his lifetime plus 50 years.
Even if a business has gone under, the corporate 'name'
(a person under the law in a great many ways) still owns
the copyright for 50 years 'after its death'. Works produced
PRIOR to 1978 are good for only 28 years from date of
creation, unless renewed. But it is the responsibility of
the reissuer to confirm ownership before using the work.
Just saying you 'think' it's in the public domain will hold
no water in court. You can request a copyright search from
the Library of Congress (they charge a nominal fee for this -
$20 per hour last time I checked) or simply locate the
principals of the former publisher and request permission in
writing.

No gray area here - just the way it works. I'm a writer
and deal with this stuff daily. You can look it up - do
a google search on 'copyright law' - it's all EASY to
find and easy to confirm - there really is no need to guess
and wonder in the era of the internet.


JOE

"Michael Black" wrote in message
...
"JOE" ) writes:
Last month at a garage sale Â* I came across a large stack of Popular
Electronics and other electronic magazines from the 50¹s 60¹s and
70¹s

Under US copyright law, Popular Electronics et al own the rights to all
of
the material in those magazines. You do not have any legal right to
sell
copies
of that material! You can quickly find yourself in trouble if you try
this - you've
made it so high profile posting here that I'm sure you'll get a 'cease
and
desist'
order from PE legal eagles (does not matter if the mag is still
published -
under
US copyright law the comapany can be fully out of business but still own
the
copyright and can still sue you).

Good luck.


I'd not argue with your point, but it does bring up an interesting point,
who owns the copyright?

Popular Electronics was published by Ziff-Davis. I gather they still
exist.
The last issue of Popular Electronics came out in 1984 or so, though by
that
time it had gone through a name change or two.

I never saw a clear indication of what it acquired, but at some point
Gernsback Publishing obtained the rights to Popular Electronics. I've
heard mixed things about whether they got past rights, or just the right
to the name. Eventually, they changed one of their existing magazines
to "Popular Electronics" but it wa not a continuation of the original
magazine. Eventually, that titled changed, to Poptronics.

Now, Gernsback went out of business at the end of 2001 or the beginning
of 2002. They didn't just stop publishing the magazine, they closed
down the business.

A few months later, Larry Steckler said he had obtained the rights to
the magazine, though again what those rights entailed was not specified.

I have no idea where that leaves the old material.

I don't have the URL handy, but someone was "archiving" old Popular
Electronics. Or was it just the Carl & Jerry stories? It would require
some digging. But they claimed (and I realize it's easy to make claims)
that they had obtained the right to do so.

Michael Ve2BVW