Thursday, October 11, 2012

Elusive Copyrights

So I am trying to track down the copyright holder of a 1933 picture I want to use in Rats & GassersThe book I found it in is 20 years out of print! Most of the pics in the book are attributed to Chrysler Corporation, so I emailed their Archives Department to see if they had the rights to the photograph. They replied the next day saying the photo was not in their archives.  I then decided to contact the publisher directly. They didn't have the title listed in amy of their databases. They referred me to a copyright website who also didn't have the ISBN or title on file. I found out the author had done a book signing in 2010 (so at least he probably isn't deceased) on a website. I contacted that website to see if I can locate the authors info and find out if he indeed has rights to the picture. I haven't heard back yet. I can not find thr authors contact info anywhere on the internet, so this may be my only hope of contacting him directly. All this for a 20 second use of a picture in my film!  Documentary film research is tedious! Ack!

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