Is this legal?

[Mushroom]

Now we have people taking photos of covers and selling them.

 

 

web page

[chrisfuccione]

When were they printed? There is a limit that a copyright last. I think it is 50 years. If it not renewed they might be in public domain. If not then they might be breaking the law. CHRIS

[Aman619]

Im not a lawyer and I dont play one on TV, but---

 

These comics may qualify as being in the public domain because the copyrights were never maintained by the publishers who may have gone out of business. Or the rights were sold to parties who never acted to protect them since.

 

And, if they are illegal, it wouls still have to worht the true owners time and expense to stop this illegal theft of their copyrighted images. In this case they couldbt collect enough to call a lawyer let alone get him to do anything.

 

If it were DC, though, Id duck for cover!!

[PovertyRow]

May not be illegal but this seller has put themselves on my [!@#%^&^] list, even though they have one book I want but will find elsewhere. I did a search tonight on Voodoo looking to fill my Voodoo slot and found that effluence. Their heading for that auction is pure bull.

[hammer-migration]

I doubt it's illegal, but it certainly is ridiculous. In the Sportscard section of Ebay, there's a seller who for the past three years gets away with cutting PICTURES out of magazines, gluing them onto stiff cardboard, sticking them in a GRADED SLAB (yes..his OWN grading service) and assigning a year and designation to the worthless "card". For instance, he'll cut a picture of Ruth out of a 1919 magazine, PHOTOCOPY it, and slab it HOT MINT '10' 1919 Spaulding Ruth ROOKIE card. Believe it or not, there's people BUYING bologna like that, legitimate bidders going up to $150+ to win them!!! He runs 50-100 auctions like that PER DAY using Xeroxs of pictures stuck to hard cardboard and thrown in his "slab" of Hornsby, Cobb, Wagner, W.Johnson, Ruth, Gehrig, etc.

I guess that this seller is his comic-counterpart.

 

 

Here's one of his ridiculous auctions now on Ebay

 

Also, search LibertyForAll's OTHER items. It's ALL cutouts. He's got Color copies of 1954T paper insert cards bid up to $100!!! How's THAT for profit:

 

Production cost: $.01

Plastic slab: $.25

labels for slab: $.05

 

total cost: 31 cents

Auction at $150 (projected)

Net profit: $149.69....for GARBAGE!

 

Also notice the keyword spamming on almost all auctions (PSA, BGS, etc.) by including and listing a completely unrelated (and valueless) legitimately graded item (ironically, the BONUS is worth 100X more than the item being auctioned!!!).

 

With bologna like THIS on Ebay, how concerned do you think they are about other issues regularly discussed on the Forums?

 

[seank]

If someone still holds the copyright on any of these covers, then what this person is doing is illegal. If they're in the public domain due to the copyright lapsing, then this sale is legal. Since the books are from the 1950s, it's hard to say whether the copyrights are still valid. That kind of search is beyond my time and resources at the moment.