The original copyright is with the paper for anything published after the second world war (the exact date depends on the country). They have the sole right to

The original copyright is with the paper for anything published after the second world war (the exact date depends on the country). They have the sole right to decide how and when their archives are published online. Determining copyright status is non-trivial, here is an example for some US periodicals: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html That being said, the paper have usually long since went under and the copyrights will never be asserted. In the extremely unlikely case they will be (for example, if the paper is still in circulation), a free online archive with no advertisements falls squarely under fair use, given the immense historical value of old papers and their nil current commercial value.