Color me surprised!

Colorizing old movies has long been a controversial process, with many in the industry thinking it’s an absurd notion that “color = better.” Even in this era, where AI can make colorization more accurate and realistic than ever before, just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

A great example of this is the original Godzilla movie from 1954. Its starkly dark tones give it such a foreboding atmosphere and adding color to that would only serve to highlight that it’s just a guy in a rubber suit breaking a bunch of models, as so well exemplified in many of the subsequent color films of the ’60s.

That didn’t stop one man from trying though, and on 17 June, the Osaka Prefectural Police arrested a 66-year-old man for selling a colorized version of Godzilla. He had used an AI to predict the correct colors and apply them to the video, then sold the modified movie on DVD online for 2,980 yen (US$21) per disc and pulled in about 1.7 million yen ($12,000).

▼ A news report on the bust.

Although many might agree he committed crimes against cinema, his legal issue was the unauthorized sale of copyrighted material. Actually, you can find lots of colorized classics of Japanese filmmaking because they’ve entered the public domain and can be used as anyone sees fit.

▼ Here’s all of Yasuhiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, now in the public domain and in AI-generated color for no reason at all!

Doing some quick math you might notice that last year was Godzilla‘s 70th anniversary, which under current Japanese copyright law could normally cause it to become public domain and would mean this man’s actions, though tacky, would be legal. However, this law is murky to say the least, especially for older movies such as this.

The main thing to consider is who the “author,” or “chosakusha” for legal purposes, of a movie is. For movies, this is especially difficult because so many people are involved in its creation. In general, there are two conditions, with the first being if the author is a company. Such a case would mean Toho had the idea to make Godzilla as a company and hired a director, writer, etc. to put their vision into action. On the other hand, if the movie was deemed the creation of key people, such as the director, producer, writer, and even the composer of the musical score if influential enough, the copyright expires 38 years after the last one of these key people passes away.

Although there were some legal battles over the years, Toho originally never assumed authorship of the original Godzilla, which was probably a strategic move on their part because the copyright period of human lives plus 38 years would likely be longer than a straight 50 years from the release date. This meant authorship went to a loosely defined group of key people, the most important of whom for this situation was director Ishiro Honda because he ended up living the longest.

▼ Actually, Godzilla composer Akira Ikufube outlived Honda, but possibly for contract reasons was not included as an author. He certainly should have been though.

Then, in 1971, the law changed and the period was extended to the death of the last author plus 50 years. This new law stated that regarding older movies the longest period should be applied. Here’s where things get kind of kooky.

▼ We’re talking Gamera-level kooky.

Toho is not the author at this point so we can rule out their validity period altogether, which leaves the last death plus 38 years under the old law or plus 50 years under the new law. Since the law stated that the longer period should be applied, a three-year-old could probably tell you that 50 years is longer than 38 and should be applied. However, because the authors were still alive in 1971, no specific period could be established and, as illogical as it might sound, it couldn’t definitively be said that 50 years after death is longer than 38 years after death in this case, so the old law of plus 38 continued.

Another revision occurred with the TPP negotiations in 2018, during which Japan adjusted its copyright law to be more in line with other countries. Here, the period was extended again to 70 years after the death of the last surviving author with the longer period being applied, and to streamline everything this time using common sense, all works were to be automatically upgraded from 50 years after death to 70 years.

But wait!

Remember that Godzilla never had the 50-year law applied to it in the first place and therefore was not subject to an automatic 70-year extension. In the end, it will remain unchanged and still become public domain on New Year’s Day 2032.

If you could understand all that, then I’d feel really proud of myself for having explained it, because I had to reread this stuff about 20 times and draw a diagram to figure it out myself.

I think at this point it’s easy to see that the copyright status of the original Godzilla film is really, really convoluted. Police said they intend to look into other colorized movies for sale online like Seven Samurai, but need some time to untangle which ones still actually have copyrights on them first.

So, if you’re planning on colorizing or in any way reproducing classic Japanese movies in Japan, you’re probably best not to unless you’re really sure it’s OK. And I’m sure you’re not sure it’s OK because no one is, including many of the filmmakers and lawmakers themselves.

It’s all best left alone anyway. Instead, we should be using AI to right some cinematic wrongs of the past, like altering the X-Men movies so the characters all have accurate uniforms rather than those bland black vinyl things where you can barely even see them while they’re fighting. Someone at Fox or Disney or whatever needs to step up and give Cyclops back his blue and yellow suit with lots of tiny pouches like God (Jim Lee) intended.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, Copyright Act, Copyright Research and Information Center, Loyola Marymount University
Images: ©SoraNews24
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