Gulliver’s Travels Free and Legal on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on December 02, 2006The first English Gulliver’s Travels cartoon is now available on BitTorrent. The cartoon is produced by Fleischer Studios Inc for Paramount Pictures, and has fallen in the public domain which means that there are no copyright restrictions.
The classic cartoon based on Jonathan Swift’s famous novel was originally released in movie theaters in 1939. The cartoon is a satire on religion, the European government, and human nature in general.
The cartoon consists of four parts in which Gulliver travels to:
It is interesting to note that Gulliver’s Travels introduced the word “Yahoo” into the English language. A yahoo is a thug or a savage creature. It was only was much later that the similarly named search engine came to be. ;)
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Gulliver’s Travels was one of the top grossing films in 1939, a year many consider the best ever for movie releases. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Walt Disney’s Snow White, released two years earlier, will ever enter into the public domain, considering that Disney was the major player in lobbying for - and receiving - copyright extensions to keep it’s still-marketable film classics out of the public domain.
It’s not exactly true that all copies of Gulliver’s Travels are non-copyrighted. There was a restored version made in the late 1980s or early 1990s and sold on VHS - and this “derivative art” would be considered copyrighted.
However, the version posted on the Internet Archive, and commonly sold as $1 DVDs, is the unrestored version with the badly deteriorated colors, and is unquestionably public domain.
As a film highlighting the idiocy of conflict between societies, Gulliver’s Travels could be considered an antiwar movie. It was released at a time when there was strong isolationist sentiment in the US, as the antiwar movement was trying to keep the US out of the looming war in Europe.
[quote comment="27403"]
It’s not exactly true that all copies of Gulliver’s Travels are non-copyrighted. [/quote]
True, only the cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios Inc has.
thanks for sharing it.
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