Talk:List of films in the public domain in the United States/2012

Removed many films

After a lot of time researching and adding citations, I am unable to find any more cites for the remaining films. This was a good faith effort to try and salvage as many films as possible with available free resources. I believe the next step is to get a copy of Film Superlist which is very costly. Until or if that ever happens, we need to be responsible to Wikipedia rules about reliable sources, and to ensure we don't falsely advertise copyright films as being public domain (a few cases have already been found). Green Cardamom (talk) 03:54, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Adding more films from Copyright.gov

Here is the copyright status of Hercules (1958 film): http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/1997/62fr20211.html. --George Ho (talk) 07:23, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Unsourced additions

Any film in this list that is not sourced to a reliable secondary source should be removed. There have been problems in the past with people adding films they "believe" are in the PD, but actually are not. Thus, we must have sources for this list. Please take a few minutes to trim from the article any films that are not sourced. Green Cardamom (talk) 23:07, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, need to watch carefully as people are trying to slip in films with a source, but the source doesn't actually say the film is in the PD. For example this edit. The film was released in 2012, but the source is from 2007 (and doesn't mention the film anyway!). This article apparently needs a lot of attention to prevent abuse. Green Cardamom (talk) 19:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

As an early contributor to this article, I was wondering what you thought was wrong with the citations to the Internet Archive as justification for public domain status. JEN9841 (talk) 01:40, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

As an end user I love IA and use it all the time. But it's a pirate haven. Anyone can sign in with an anonymous account, upload a pirated media file and claim it's PD -- either intentionally trying to fool people, or misinformed about the copyright status. Thus it's not a reliable source, for Wikipedia purposes it's considered a self-published source, since whoever uploads the file determines the copyright status on their own, not from a verifiable expert source. Green Cardamom (talk) 03:03, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Films previously in the public domain

If there are no objections I would like to remove this section. The reason is all (except one) are Uruguay Round Agreements Act films. There are thousands of such films and beyond the scope of this article to keep track of. I'd also like to move It's a Wonderful Life into the main list since the film itself is actually in the PD, though the script is not. Green Cardamom (talk) 16:08, 9 May 2012 (UTC)