YH in Public Domain

"Works published with notice of copyright or registered in unpublished form prior to January 1, 1964, had to be renewed during the 28th year of their first term of copyright to maintain copyright for a full 95-year term." (from Wikipedia) It is possible that YH was copyrighted prior to its release date and that no one renewed it in 1991 or so. This was why "It's a Wonderful Life" became such a television staple in the 70s and 80s until a lawsuit re-established it's copyright as a derivative work of the original still-copyrighted story.

Also, if a work was mistakenly published without a copyright notice, before 1978 it seems to have fallen immediately into public domain. It is my understanding that this was the fate of "Night of the Living Dead", the first distributor neglected to include a copyright statement and anyone since who could make a copy could distribute and use it.

A lot of these small sellers seem to be relying on a gray area where if an item has not been released or has been released, but not in the country they are selling in, they maintain they have the rights to distribute until an official release is made. I do not know what basis in law they are relying on, but I have seen this explanation on several small seller's websites. A lot of them have the same material -- I've noticed a lot of dupes of old Universal TV movies from the 70s (e.g., Brotherhood of the Bell, Crowhaven Farm, Something Evil. Either these websites' explanation about unreleased items is true, or Universal doesn't care to go after these small sellers.

Hope this helps.

[deleted]

"Youngblood Hawke" is not in the public domain.

Of course, many people sell bootleg copies.

Tony