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What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2017
- ginko 10y agoSure, it sucks that none of these properly entered the public domain by now, but who really cares if you pirate the Psycho, The Magnificent Seven, Elvis's It's Now or Never nowadays?
- Dylan16807 10y agoYou may be able to pirate it, but try to incorporate it into a new work and you're guaranteeing a lawsuit.
- orionblastar 10y agoEven if you claim fair use?
- jackvalentine 10y agoFair use exceptions are very limited in scope compared to what you may want to produce using the characters or other properties of a work.
- orionblastar 10y agoLike a small clip from a movie to use to teach people about something in a class or MOOC?
- jackvalentine 10y agoLike making your own Micky Mouse movie.
- techdragon 10y agoFair use is a defensive claim. You have to be willing to get sued if you want to invoke it. So invoking fair use is expensive and risky. Which sucks.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoThe Magnificent Seven might be a bad example there; it had a 2016 remake, which I'll bet led to some sales of the original film (and probably also the original original film, Seven Samurai).
- angersock 10y agoWe have to do better in our legislation than "well, it's only a crime if somebody cares". Otherwise, why bother having a law about copyright infringement at all?
- bitJericho 10y agoYou want people to be able to sue you even if you didn't cause them any harm whatsoever?
- icebraining 10y agoPeople are able to sue you even if you didn't cause them any harm. Regarding copyright, they'll even win (see "statutory damages", which aren't related to the actual damages).
- bitJericho 10y agoFinancial harm is still harm. You cant sue unless you are personal affected in some way, financial, emotional or otherwise.
- icebraining 10y agoYes, financial harm is still harm, no argument there. But in copyright, the magic of "presumed harm" applies, so the plaintiff doesn't have to prove that they were actually harmed, hence statutory damages: Statutory damages are a damage award in civil law, in which the amount awarded is stipulated within the statute rather than being calculated based on the degree of harm to the plaintiff.
- bitJericho 10y agoYou still must have been harmed in some way. You can't just sue and say "well somebody owns the copyright on that! You'd have to be the one to own it in order to sue. Continue reading about statutory damages and explains what they are intended for.
- cooper12 10y agoTheir estates for one. Also these media are still popular and still get restored/remastered/re-released so as long as they are profitable copyright holders will care.
- emodendroket 10y agoEven if they aren't profitable or being sold copyright holders often try to prevent piracy anyway.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agohttp://archive.is/e0lnx http://archive.is/e0lnx
- Aloha 10y agoThe bigger problem in my mind is all the orphaned works that will never be read, seen or enjoyed again because they are still locked behind the wall of copyright for owners who no longer care about them.
- chimeracoder 10y agoOr worse, works which could be used, but for which the process of actually figuring out who the holders are and tracking them down is prohibitively complicated and expensive.
- vanderZwan 10y agoSee also: the mess that was Sita Sings the Blues. EDIT: I mean the copyright issues, not the movie itself obviously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright... http://sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html http://sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html
- pcmaffey 10y agoExcellent movie, btw, for anyone interested in animation/myth/music and intersection thereof.
- Aloha 10y agoExactly. Personally, I don't mind the idea so much of a perpetual copyright - provided it requires the rights owner to frequently and actively participate in the process to keep the protections active after the initial period. (and perhaps a fee schedule to reflect the supposed value of the piece) I think its possible for a copyright bill to exist that both the EFF and Disney can both support.
- convolvatron 10y agothis is the problem. the law dept at Disney never has any interest in weakening copyright law in any way. no matter how reasonable. lawyers only see degrees of risk
- acabal 10y agoI've mused on this idea elsewhere, but it's applicable here too: I can't help but feel today's absurdly draconian copyright laws and lengths are going to make our century a terrible cultural black hole for our future-human descendents. The vast, vast majority of creators who produce culture--books, movies, music, visual art, etc.--don't see widespread distribution, success, or fame in their own lifetimes. This is true today and it was true in the past too. Today, we have people like Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and others, volunteering their time and energy to lovingly archive, curate, and distribute out-of-copyright works. Many of these works get a cultural second life: people today can freely discover and read a book published before 1923, whose author might have died penniless and unknown in their day. Their work, their name, their ideas, and their legacy lives on 100 years after their death, even if the world they lived in overlooked them, because volunteers can freely update and distribute those works. Can we say the same about the vast majority of work produced today, for whose creators don't attain widespread fame or cultural influence? Everything anyone produces, from a smudge on a piece of paper to the Great American Novel, now automatically gains a copyright that can last over a century, and that has almost never failed to be extended. As one of the many everyday creators who never see significant success, how would you feel if your work was not only ignored today, but for all time too? Our future-human descendents are going to think culture from 1923-2100 consisted of almost nothing but the 400 comic book movies, the 75 Star Wars movies, and Harry Potter. Everything else will be too unprofitable for a megacorporation to distribute, and illegal for anyone else to.
- Spooky23 10y agoIt's worse when you think of inaccessible government and corporate archives, most of which will be lost in a few decades.
- cryptarch 10y agoThere's a reason the takedown of a good private tracker is seen like the burning of the Library of Alexandria all over again. It was very sad to see What.CD go down recently. They had every release of every LP, EP and demo, of every obscure artist you could possibly imagine. The curation and amount of content made commercial services like Spotify and TIDAL look barren in comparison. Best of all: there was no DRM on the content and you could freely use your VPN. I just hope enough libraries survive for the content to last.
- geekamongus 10y agoI love that this website is a throwback to the 90's, complete with table-based layouts and overlapping cells.
- icebraining 10y agoLook at the source of HN some day :)
- Goopplesoft 10y agoInterestingly the Copyright Term Extension Act is also known as the "Mickey Mouse Protection act" artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-copyright-law/
- theonemind 10y agoAKA The Sonny Bono act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono i never had any desire to leave some great legacy after my death, but I can't help but notice how I personally feel in regard to Sonny Bono because of this, and realize that I actually don't want to leave humanity worse off and get remembered for that. Quite possibly incorrectly, since I didn't track politics at all my young age in 1998, I can't shake my impression that Sonny Bono had no principles and sold us all out for his own personal gain.
- jccalhoun 10y agoThe Sonny Bono act gave Disney 20 more years. I am guessing that in the second half of 2017 we will see some grumblings of yet another extension of copyright (or at least some kind of reform where copyright can be renewed eternally).
- protomyth 10y agoI wonder if there is a compromise that can be done to at least get the works out there. I get the feeling the big fear isn't really that "Steamboat Willie" would be freely available, but that the character of Mickey Mouse would be. It seems like an extension of trademark law with continued registration and payments on the characters would be a compromise that could break lose the original book / movie. I would imagine many would hate to give up the ability to create new, original stories or do mashups, but we won't get that anyway.
- dublinben 10y agoTrademark doesn't have time limits like Copyright. There is no real threat to Disney's control over the Mickey character in commerce.
- protomyth 10y agoCan you cite where the work in the public domain can be stopped from mashups by trademark currently. It sounds like as soon as the copyright expires people can do their own thing with the work.
- dublinben 10y agoHere's some more information on the subject: http://copyright.nova.edu/mickey-public-domain/ http://copyright.nova.edu/mickey-public-domain/
- protomyth 10y ago> the Court ruled that in order for trademark to protect a character in the public domain, the character must have obtained “secondary meaning.” That's a pretty high bar, and what I suggested for a compromise was quite a bit lower.
- cooper12 10y agoThis comment was in reply to a now-deleted comment which ended with the statement: "The bigger problem is figuring out how to curate all of this which is more widely published than every before. Also, it's not crazy to think that today's copyright laws see some major revisions in the next few decades. The Internet has changed everything since just 1980 or so, and these are old laws that need reworking." --- Unfortunately I'm not sure I can feel the same optimism. Copyright law has long been beholden to corporate interests. For them, it's only fine if it keeps getting expanded indefinitely. The more restrictive the terms, the more likely that others will have to license their works and the more they can bludgeon any offenders. Your view is really tied to the present day, but what about all these works that aren't available on computers that need to be desperately digitized? I think we already have a natural curation mechanism: something popular and important gets reproduced in some way; it gets quoted, adapted, tweaked. Those are the works that need to be prioritized, but in doing so we might miss out on undiscovered gems or things whose importance will only be apparent in hindsight. Also, storage is cheap nowadays, we can easily just keep everything, index it, and let others sift through it later. (one example is the Internet Archive, we won't know what role these stored websites could play in a few decades like the Geocities archive)
- Houshalter 10y agoI wrote this on another thread a few months ago. It's in the context of paywalled science, but it applies more generally: Copyright law is ridiculous. Nonfiction and scientific work should be treated differently than fictional works. I don't really care if Mickey Mouse goes into the public domain. But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger. And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years? I believe 99% of all works make 99%+ of their revenue in the first few years. Having copyright last a lifetime, let alone much longer, is just crazy. Creators benefit exponentially less for every additional year of protection. And only the very successful ones even benefit to begin with - the vast vast majority of works are just forgotten by that time. Put a cost on renewing copyright. This is actually how it used to be. Half way through, you could pay a fee to have copyright extended. Very few people paid this fee (because most works aren't economically valuable), so most works went into public domain much sooner. Journals charge $30 to access obscure ancient papers. But I bet they wouldn't pay even $30 to keep the rights to those same papers. Don't put everything into copyright by default. And again especially works of nonfiction or scientific papers. If the authors want that, then sure. This wouldn't fix the issues with big journals that demand it. But it still seems like a sensible idea to have copyright opt-in, not opt-out.
- colejohnson66 10y agoWell yeah, but then Disney came along...
- peller 10y agoThe ironic thing is, most of Walt Disney's biggest hits were all based off of others' works in the public domain. A fact whose implications are sadly lost upon the people who continue to rubber-stamp copyright term extensions.
- kagamine 10y agoLike these classic fairy tales that were folklore until written down and of which many exist in the collective consciousness of western civilization: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/ http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/
- fjarlq 10y agoWebsite overloaded... here's a cache. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fweb.law.duke.edu%2Fcspd%2Fpublicdomainday%2F2017%2Fpre-1976 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps... "What books would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws?" Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird John Updike, Rabbit, Run Joy Adamson, Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval: The Age of Roosevelt Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Scott O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique "Consider the films and television shows from 1960 that would have become available this year." The Time Machine Psycho Spartacus Exodus The Apartment Inherit the Wind The Magnificent Seven Ocean’s 11 The Alamo The Andy Griffith Show (first episodes) The Flintstones (first episodes) Also listed: songs from 1960 (e.g. Elvis's "It's Now or Never"), and copyrighted scientific research from 1960 still behind paywalls (e.g. 1960 papers on the structure of hemoglobin and myoglobin).
- bootload 10y agoWatching "The Silicon Valley of Hardware" with Bunnie Huang [0], it is obvious Shenzhen would have been a different place if the militarisation of intellectual property was enforced. So the question is the step from hardware hacking and manufacturing and sales hampered in the US? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY
- starseeker 10y agoThe current copyright system is probably inevitable if you view monetization as the sole valid means of creation incentivization. There are also those who want to preserve the "integrity" of their work indefinitely and avoid any risk of what they would consider degrading or inappropriate reuse. If you come at this from either the monetization or the indefinite integrity camps, the public domain is entirely a negative proposition. This is unfortunate, since from a socitial standpoint there are many overall benefits to the public domain (renewal of interest in what would otherwise be lost works and lost effort, lowered barriers to entry for those needing older work on which to base new efforts, etc.) Unfortunately, most of those gains are also net negatives to those working within (and benefiting from) the current system, and consequently the public domain is unlikely to have advocates with the resources to sway the powers that be in its favor. I suppose a sufficiently broad and strong wave of public opinion might do the trick, but I don't know what the prospects of that are (I suspect dim in the short term, more difficult to calculate in the long term if copyright terms keep getting extended indefinitely.)
- kagamine 10y agoThe "integrity of the work" argument has always been an oddity to me. As a Brit who grew up with ska (the original and the revival) I have been aware for a long time that the island music, rocksteady, ska, reggae etc, flourished due to weak and often ignored copyright law in Jamaica. There is a whole genre of music there, with a very strong cultural background that is historically important in Jamaica and further afield, the UK being just one of those places. Some of the best music, imo, from the 60s and 70s came from Jamaican artists "ripping off" western music to create something unique. I don't want to live in a world in which Marcia Griffiths' voice went unheard. I also want people like Marcia to get paid and live a good life. The current copyright system is not working for anyone, not for artists either I believe. The "degrading" of work seems like an arrogant argument, as if nobody in the word could do better than the original (or even different if not better). Books require editing before publication, songs require mastering and mixing by professionals. It is reasonable to assume that any work could be reworked as something improved, as long as that reworking does not try to pass itself off as the original there ought not to be a problem. Some system of profit share where profit exists could exist. Here's a humorous article from techdirt highlighting the absurdities of the current situation https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/17153830875/get-up-stand-up-whose-rights-now.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/17153830875/get-u... My own take on one detail discussed on the comments there is that the Marley estate probably are trying to regain the copyright because the family are mostly working musicians (at least 3 sons and one daughter of Bob Marley that I know of) and would like to perform their father's songs.
- Hondor 10y agoThe TPP extends copyright terms in other countries. The new president opposes that deal. So there's a bit of hope.
- EvanAnderson 10y agoIt's pleasing to know that long copyright terms provide incentive for dead authors to produce new works.
- fuck_google 10y agoIt is sad how successfull the US has been in promoting the culture of greed and selfishness throughout the world.
- visarga 10y agoI think the effective status of copyright is being influenced by open source and creative commons. The more we publish in open source, the more value it accumulates, and that attracts new publishing. It grows like a black hole, eating everything (or like communism, if you asked Microsoft a few years ago). Just look of what remained of the copyright protected software market after 2000. Github is the new Library of Alexandria, not What.CD, because What.CD was only free as in beer, while Github is free as in freedom as well.
- necessity 10y agoIP is bs. Don't care for it, don't respect it. Don't expect government - the sole protector of it - to ever change anything regarding it for the better, just ignore it.
- chiaro 10y agoIt's a shockingly transparent corruption of power that these increases were applied retrospectively. The entire rationale for copyright is to incentivize the creation of new works, which explicitly does apply to past creations. This is nothing more than rent seeking.
- Flip-per 10y agoCopyright could be used as litmus test to see who actually makes decisions / writes laws in a country.
- _andromeda_ 10y agoProperty rights should be preserved for as long as possible IMO.
- ue_ 10y agoWhy? And that's even assuming that IP is property in the first place.
- _andromeda_ 10y agoIP is by the very definition, property. Edit: Why? Property rights should be upheld in perpetuity. The author's estate should continue to benefit from his works.
- kefka 10y agoNo, it's the exact opposite thing as "property". I can take materials and land, and build a house. I can live in said house. But if someone claims that the way I cut the wood was under a patent, then they can lay claim on my property with make-believe property - that of which is in the mind. It's also how we get absurd things like BRACA1 gene for breast cancer is "owned" by a company, meaning all those with breast cancer somehow owe this company for using any techniques to find it. Or it's how we get idiotic things like "I'll sell you this shiny disk, but the software says you lose all first sale doctrine cause of copyright". Or, with laws strengthening copyright (DMCA) say "You may have bought and own this hardware, but it's illegal for you to fix it without our approval, because of 'prevention techniques'. " Might I remind you, that only 30 years prior, companies would attach the schematic of the electronics in the back panel for easy repair. 'Intellectual Property' degrades property in every way.
- Natanael_L 10y agoCreative works is arguably all just "remixing" what already exists. ... In which case nobody alive truly owns anything which isn't just a derative work of what the estate of some ancient Greek's estate would already own, thus you'd owe them royalties for everything you do with "your own" works. It is also by nature non-rivalrous, this no need for defending it to be able to use it for yourself. It is proven over and over that sharing and collaborating results in better outcomes for everybody, and thus there's no strong argument based on "benefit of the author" in favor of it. There's also no obvious definition of what the limit is for WHEN you've created something novel, thus nobody can ever actually really know if they truly have something they actually own or not.
- enterx 10y agoAll this copyright nonsense is so medieval. What we need in the 21st century is the new Universal Copyright Act which will claim the content public domain once it has 50%+1 direct democratic votes to be so.
- mjhm2539 10y agoOn the contrary, in the medieval period, there was no notion of copyright whatsoever. The Order of Preachers, otherwise known as the Dominicans, would convene every year and openly share all of the technological advances they had made with the rest of the order, who would then return to their priories and implement the more effective agricultural/technological practices
- FollowSteph3 10y agoAnother possibility is a service that keeps track of people who give away their copyright rights. Or similar to a renewal fee which gets exponentially more expensive with time, at the very least we could require they at least resubmit a request to stay copyrighted every year. The key is that you want some action to be taken otherwise fs no longer copyrighted by default.
- r4ltman 10y agoit'll change for the better, i'd explain how but I'm still manoeuvring in order to potentially benefit, however, it's a very simple dialogue. granular pay per bit as to become free, don't worry about the future. the future of the future is the present, that's the future, and this thread, truly is the past as art form.
- HirojaShibe 10y agoI would support an effort to remove the copyright protections of all works that were created before Jan 01 2001. Making all works from the last century available for not only the current generation but an actual gift for future generations. All those works no matter the idea would now be re-imagine,expounded upon, improve, and distributed wider for all peoples. There is fundamental no reason to at all to keep such works under such protection it only hinders the growth of culture,society and humanity. As well as supporting efforts to repeal these century long protections of bodies of work by many organization mention in the comment section.
- erikbye 10y agohttps://github.com/ipfs/ipfs https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs