The Copyright in Doctor Who
So there was an article on Slashdot a couple of days ago claiming that the first few Doctor Who episodes may fall into the public domain at the end of this year. Obviously this isn’t true; the submitter had confused the copyrights in the broadcasts (which expire after the end of the 50th year after broadcast) with the copyright in the actual film.
So when will the episodes escape into the public domain?
Film copyright lasts until the end of the 70th year after the last of the following die:
- the principal director,
- the author of the screenplay,
- the author of the dialogue, or
- the composer of music specially created for and used in the film
with various qualifications if their identities aren’t known, or they don’t exist. So we need to take an episode, identify all the above people, and find out when they died. If any are still alive we can’t calculate how long the copyright will last.
The following is all based on the information provided by Wikipedia. It may be wrong. For simplicity I’ve only gone through the First Doctor episodes, and in the case where Wikipedia didn’t have dates for a relevant person, I am assuming they are still alive.
The first Doctor Who serial, An Earthly Child, was directed by Waris Hussein, who is still alive - so that is at least 70 years away.
The first serial I could find where all the relevant people have died is The Aztecs (s1e6). The composer, Richard Bennett, died in 2012, which puts the serial into the public domain on 1 January 2083.
The writer of The Time Meddler (s2e9) died in 1986, however the script editor, Donald Tosh, is still alive. So if he wrote any of the dialogue or screenplay, the work is in indefinite copyright. If he didn’t, it will fall into the public domain in 2057.
Terry Nation, who wrote many episodes of Doctor Who including The Daleks’ Master Plan (s3e4), died in 1997, but the composer, Tristram Cary, died in 2008. As with The Time Meddler, Donald Tosh was the script editor, so this episode will be in the public domain in 2079 or in at least 70 years.
Tristram Cary also composed the incidental music to The Gunfighters (s3e8), so the copyright in that serial should expire by 2079.
The final serial we need to consider (of 29 in total) is The Smugglers (s4e1). The director, Julia Smith, died in 1997, so this should ender the public domain in 2068.
Of course none of these dates is definite - there may have been other people involved, or the people I have identified may not have contributed enough to count, but it looks like no episode of Doctor Who (at least involving the First Doctor will enter the public domain for another 52 years. We’ll be seeing the 100th Anniversary episode before anyone can make legal, unlicensed Doctor Who stories.
And that’s assuming copyright doesn’t get extended again - and with Mickey Mouse possibly falling into the public domain within the next decade (if it isn’t there already), extension is a significant threat.
Copyright is a mess.
Also, copyright can be rather morbid; having to track down all sorts of people, hoping that they’re dead so that a calculation can be made.
