Ephermera Online.

EphermeraNow is a great collection of high-quality, mid-century advertisements and illustrations.

According to the site's question page you can save these images to your own computer for personal use, but you can't use any of these images on a website without permission and/or payment. Is this how the public domain works? Could anyone just scan in some images from old magazines and resell them? Seeing all those watermarks made me wonder. Most likely, you'd be paying for labor (scanning, burning of images) and not the images themselves. Still, $400?

Regardless, this is a vibrant collection worth perusing.

Comments

[Bill]

I have a hard time believing this guy is actually claiming ownership of the material, which is in effect what he's doing when he threatens to sic his lawyer on anybody who "borrows" one of the images. ummm... unless he's mr. time-life ca. 1950, isn't borrowing the images exactly what he's doing?

the words "great big giant stones" come to mind.

[Mena]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I appreciate the work this person has done to scan such high-quality versions of the print ads, but it just seems a bit odd to make money from this sort of content.

[Mena]

Oh, and those two mentions of the lawyer is what prompted me to actually comment about it.

[shannon]

I really like the ads myself. I think I've got a bunch of old Nat Geos and Life Mags lying around.. Oh! and I've got a scanner.. will any of you pay me $400 to scan the ads and make them available to you? Sounds like a scam to me. I'd like to see the documents he's got to back up his ownership of that material. Until then, I'll just borrow them for my own viewing pleasure.

[ryan]

Perhaps his "lawyer" should give him a clearer definition of public domain... I've had the understanding that an image cannot become public domain until 50 years have passed since the death of the creator.

[Boson]

These images are coded with an invisible digital watermark.

did anybody actually find the watermark? I ran it against photoshop and couldn't finda digimarc one...

that being said, the guy's a dummy.

[Phillip Harrington]

If you don't want someone to steal it, don't put the it on the internet. The racket is not the $400 for images, it's the lawsuits he's hoping to file.

[Phillip Harrington]

He, she, it... is it a he? Assumption.

[Chris Shieh]

And how can any of those Coke images be in the public domain? I doubt Coke's lawyers even need their "teeth sharpened."

[Lindsay]

I thought there was some rule where you could use copyrighted images after a certain number of years, but only if it was not for profit (which he's obviously not).

...though I could very well be combining a couple laws in my head (or making them up altogether, I suppose).

But regardless, there are indeed some cool images in there.

[Richard Kolseth]

Mena, is that you?

[Alison]

All the lawyer and copyright stuff aside, I think that some of the sidebar descriptions are hilarious.

[Brent]

If these pictures truly are in the public domain, then this guy is free to charge whatever he wants for the electronic images he created and to protect them, just in the same way that he could create a book with these images, sell it on Amazon, and not allow anyone to copy and redistribute the pages. Public domain essentially means the material is owned by no one--or owned by everyone, depending on how you want to look at it. And contrary to popular belief, displaying images or text on a web page DOES NOT place the material in the public domain. Public domain is a legal term and must be explicitly stated by the owner or granted by expired copyright.

[Jeff]

This is an e-mail response a friend of mine got after asking him for a little info as to why he could sell them ect.. I really don't understand the whole thing but maybe this could help?

::
We're a service bureau. Magazines pay us to make a scan and turn it into something that can be printed as a four-color separation. $400 per job is the standard rate. If you happen to have a 1958 DeSoto brochure lying around and have a $6,000 prepress scanner and the right software and skills, you certainly don't have to pay us $400, you can do it yourself!

For copyrighted works created before 1962, the copyrights expired after 28 years unless they were renewed. But this is usually a moot point -- most advertising and promotional materials back then were never copyrighted to begin with. Of course anyone else with the same original materials is free to make his own scans and merchandise them. What we own is the rights to the scans we make -- not the original materials.

I think maybe you need to read up a little more on intellectual property rights.

David Hall
EphemeraNow.com
::

I don't know what all that means, considering I'm majoring in industrial design, not law or anything close to it but maybe one of you do.

I guess it's kind of like Brent said.

[Aled]

Sounds like somebody who needs to learn about Eldred v. Ashcroft pretty quickly to avoid having his ass sued.

Also from the ones I've looked at, some contain trademarked designs or images so I would expect that the owning companies may have an interest that someone else is profiting off their brand...

[Jake]

That right click disabled stuff only works in IE on PC BTW. Mozilla has no problems.

[Pet Rock Star]

It's pretty ridiculous anyways, when you can just view the source and jump right to it. Jackass.

[David]

Well gosh. So Shannon Campbell, "a Pennsylvania-based folk-rock musican," says, in regard to right-clicking and HTML, that I am a "jackass." Thank you, Shannon Campbell (and did you notice that you misspelled "musician" on your Web site?) And let's see, Phillip Harrington says, "The racket is not the $400 for images, it's the lawsuits he's hoping to file." I appreciate that, Phillip Harrington. And Aled Davies advises me to "learn about Eldred v. Ashcroft pretty quickly to avoid having [my] ass sued." Good advice, Aled. And Chris Shieh asks, "And how can any of those Coke images be in the public domain?" (I thank Chris for not accusing me of racketeering or calling me an ass.)

First, the Coke images definitely aren't in the public domain ... we never said they were. We're selling the original ads, as the site makes clear.

Second, re car scans, $400 is a standard service bureau fee for mass-market work. And these are not the jpegs on the site but 40- to 70-megabyte CMYK separations. We certainly don't don't go around filing lawsuits. Sheesh.

Third, we don't own "rights" to the original works. Anyone with a scanner and an old Packard brochure is free to do the same. However we DO own the scans we make. Please do not rip them off -- they represent a lot of time, money and effort.

Fourth, this stuff was never copyrighted to begin with. A lot of people have a hard time wrapping their minds around this concept. Back then, to have a work copyrighted, you had to register it with the Library of Congress (by sending a copy of the work, along with a fee). And then of course you had to claim copyright on the work itself ... (c) 1945 Acme Corp. For most advertisers, it wasn't worth the bother since this stuff was thrown away as soon as it was read. And this is why so much clip art today is recycled 1940s and 1950s advertising.

Fifth, the Web site is supposed to be for FUN. What we sell barely covers the costs of running it.

Thanks for the forum. (Why is there so much hostility here, I wonder. Or maybe it's just lighthearted sarcasm, and I'm taking it all too seriously? Yeah, that must be it.)

[David]

And finally, or maybe not, regarding the query by Boson Au (I'm a "dummy" -- luv ur website too, man!) re watermarking, yes the images are marked.

[Pet Rock Star]

Actually, I misspelled "cordially," too, but you missed that one. Way to put me in my place, David.

[Chris Shieh]

Well, they don't seem to be selling anything there now, and I can't find the Coke images. But the real question is, who's paying the exorbitant costs of running his website now?