We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
348 COPYRIGHT AND COPYRIGHTED STORY equal length, or fifty-six years in all. If you have a copy of a book on which the copyright has apparently run out, to judge from the printed copyright notice, you are not excused because of ignorance if the copyright has been extended. It is your business to find out. In- quiry to the Copyright Office will generally bring the desired infor- mation. 23. Entry under a single classification covers all rights until they are sub-divided. Entry of a book holds to the title the dramatic and screen rights. If one of these rights is sold, the assignment must be recorded in the Copyright Office within ninety days if it is to stand in law. 24. Photoplays may be copyrighted in three forms—as a book, which covers the general rights; as a photoplay offered in copies for sale, and as a photoplay not offered in copies for sale. The exact wording of the law is "motion pictures" and not "photoplays" since there are other motion pictures than photoplay productions. As a book the story must be printed and bound. As a play in copies for sale two complete prints of the film must be deposited with the Reg- ister of Copyrights, who may retain them or, at the option of the Librarian of Congress, stamp them for identification and return them to the person entering them. In the case of plays not offered for sale, a typewritten description of the subject with cuttings from the film for the purpose of identification must be registered. One copy of this description and the cuttings will suffice. 25. To enter any form write the Register of Copyrights, Wash- ington, D. C, asking for a proper form and explaining precisely what you want to register. Return postage is not required, as the cards will be sent under government frank. Fill out the blank and return to the Register witli the copies for entry. Except in the case of film, which is not mailable, the postmaster will receive this material for free transmission if it is presented to him with the statement that it is for copyright. It is not sufficient to drop the matter in a mailing chute. 26. Generally the author of a photoplay signs a release of all claims before he receives a check. This covers all forms of copyright. If he wishes to retain one or more rights, he should so state on the face of the script when it is submitted for sale, writing "Fiction rights reserved." or "Dramatic rights reserved," or else "Fiction and dra- matic rights reserved." It is important that the release slip later sent to be signed shall carry this same exemption in legal form. It is this release slip which serves as the legal contract between you and the manufacturer. It does not matter what you may write on the script. It is what appears in the release which counts. Such a reservation, except in the case of well known writers, is apt to act as a bar to sales, since most manufacturers require the right to give the story in fiction form to the magazines and will not buy the photoplay rights alone. 27. It seldom, if ever, pays to purchase the photoplay rights to