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Poster:	lartrak	Date:	Jan 31, 2013 7:03am
Forum:	animationandcartoons	Subject:	Restored toons and copyright

I've noticed several public domain cartoons, like the color Popeye theatrical shorts (Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, etc), are in pretty cruddy form on the archive, likely taken from the cheap DVD releases floating around.

However, some of the more popular cartoons of this have been restored - there's restored Popeye ones available on YouTube. I presume the original rights holders did this restoration.

My understanding is non-creative restoration like this doesn't give any additional copyright protection. Is this correct? I ask because I'd wanted to use some cartoon footage for an educational presentation (it'd probably pass Fair Use muster, but I'd rather just use public domain stuff just in case), and the quality of the old copies on the cheapy DVDs is too low for what I'd planned. Not to mention, it'd be nice to upload the high quality versions to the archive.

Any thoughts anyone?