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The Public Domain Starts Growing Again Next Year
- pmoriarty 9y agoI almost wish this would be kept quiet. I'm afraid that if news of it gets out, corporations with an interest in extending copyright will wake up and start lobbying.
- shervinafshar 9y agoAlthough I agree with you that this visibility might backfire, but I believe the transparency is of higher value in such debates compared to strategical opaqueness.
- Xeoncross 9y ago> transparency is of higher value in such debates compared to strategical opaqueness I want to put this on a plaque and hang it in every public office.
- sigstoat 9y agodo you think their lawyers and lobbyists would somehow forget, and miss the opportunities to get in some billable hours?
- adventured 9y agoFortunately there are very few corporations with an interest in fighting an expensive lobbying battle over works from 1923. There's substantial opposition to an extension, something lacking 20 years ago (when there was scant opposition, and the opposition that existed had few financial resources). Google for example is against continuing to extend it. They have more financial resources than everyone on the other side combined. There is also meaningful public awareness, something almost entirely lacking just 20 years ago. It's no longer a fight Disney can easily win.
- jandrese 9y agoIMHO the only thing stopping an extension is that next year is a mid-term election year and a lot of house members will be busy. I have zero doubt that this congress would not push back against a major corporation like Disney on a matter like this. The best hope for saving the public domain is general dysfunction on the hill. This is especially true if you get people like Lawrence Lessig in there arguing against extension, some members would vote for it just to stick it to him and all of his ivory tower leftist friends.
- incompatible 9y agoThey always seem to find time for amending the copyright law, sometimes multiple times in the same year. A list of amendments is at https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html. I'm not sure what has happened since 2010 though, since there's only one change, in 2014.
- shmerl 9y agoIn this day and age they'll fail. The only reason they succeeded with this garbage in the past was the fact that they did it mostly in the dark, hiding this from the public. Today they can't pull it off, but it of course doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention.
- paddlepop 9y agoFrom my understanding it was quietness that allowed lobbyists to pass the extension in 1998. I have been unable to find a great editorial I read a couple of years ago that detailed it, the only major resistance coming from a 1997 sized internet. I would hope a similar act with social media as it is today would be met with a much stronger resistance.
- tommoor 9y ago> Disney hasn’t been the best in allowing its own works to become part of the public domain Well that's the understatement of the century.
- paulus_magnus2 9y agoFairy tales have provided a source of inspiration for the Disney studio.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_animated_films_based_on_fairy_tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_animated_films_...
- scarecrowbob 9y agoBut it is... difficult... to use Disney's fairy tales as an inspiration for your own work.
- dagw 9y agoGrimm and Lang didn't have very good copyright lawyers working for them.
- batbomb 9y agoReally, it's the understatement of the (century - 5 years)
- jmcphers 9y agoIf you're wondering how we got into this mess: it's mostly Mickey Mouse's fault. https://priceonomics.com/how-mickey-mouse-evades-the-public-domain/ https://priceonomics.com/how-mickey-mouse-evades-the-public-...
- tzs 9y agoThat's not really accurate. According to your link, Disney copyrights have been extended twice. The first was with the Copyright Act of 1976. The main purposes of the 1976 Act were to update US copyright law to better conform to the Universal Copyright Convention and to prepare for the US to later join the Berne Convention; to update it to take into account new technology developed since the 1909 Act such as television, movies, radio, and sound recordings; and to codify various doctrines from case law include fair use. The copyright extension in the 1976 Act was a side effect of changing terms to match those of Berne countries. As far as I've been able to tell, the 1976 Act had very little opposition. Disney almost certainly was in favor of it, but I've found no evidence that they had any particular influence in drafting it or getting it passed, or even spent any lobbying money on it. There was no need for them to do so. Disney did lobby for the 1998 extension (as did most major content creators), which extended US copyright terms to match those of Europe. I don't know how Disney successfully lobbying once (as part of a large group) for a copyright extension turned into the internet myth that they have constantly been getting copyright extensions.
- Tomte 9y agoLawrence Lessig claimed so. See the Free Culture presentation. He makes it look as all these copyright extensions (centuries back, to the Statute of Anne) were Disney‘s doing. That was highly influential. Lessig is a very gifted speaker.
- bsimpson 9y agoI feel like Lessig painted copyright extension as an abuse of Disney's lobbyists in Free Culture, but it's been more than a decade since I've read it; I may be conflating memories.
- buckminster 9y ago
- chb 9y agoAgain? https://hn.algolia.com/?query=public%20domain&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=public%20domain&sort=byDate&pr...
- walterbell 9y agoHollywood is not going to contest: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-its-not-planning-another-copyright-extension-push/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... "We are not aware of any such efforts, and it's not something we are pursuing," an RIAA spokesman told us when we asked about legislation to retroactively extend copyright terms. "While copyright term has been a longstanding topic of conversation in policy circles, we are not aware of any legislative proposals to address the issue," the MPAA told us.
- kristopolous 9y agoI get all of this but what about the Copyright Alliance lobbying group, that's likely where any serious movement will start. I was getting advertisements from them for years essentially looking for case studies of either personal or "family" copyright (as in extension) and people willing to essentially astroturf. I'm guessing the efforts just bombed. I don't see the ads any more and all the comments, where they were possible were deeply cynical and lambasting them.
- jobu 9y agoThe copyright for Mickey Mouse doesn't expire until 2023, so they still have some time.
- Aloha 9y agoThe copyright for Mickey Mouse will never expire so long as they keep making new art of Mickey Mouse - the copyright for the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoon however will expire in 2023. Copyright is not like a patent where once it expires anyone can use the novel work. Something else, while someone could repackage the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts once the copyrights expire, it is unlikely that someone could make new Mickey Mouse related stories, because of trademark and other issues - beyond that, 1923 mickey and 2017 mickey only have a passing resemblance. http://createwebquest.com/sites/default/files/images/mickeymouse.jpg http://createwebquest.com/sites/default/files/images/mickeym... What we identify (as in most consumers of mickey related cartoons) identify as mickey mouse - didn't exist until fantasia in 1940. So long as WDC continues to make artwork with that character in it, and continues to keep up the trademark - the character itself will never leave copyright or trademark.
- Noos 9y agoProblem is material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless. We already have many things, like the Fleischer Superman cartoons, for example. You just end up with cheap people bundling hundreds of public domain stuff with no real curation or quality for a few bucks in either physical or digital media form. Eventually, they stop bothering once they realize no one buys them; and it just gets thrown on youtube for fraction of pennies per ad click. Doesn't even help creatives, because public domain stuff sees little to no creative half-life apart from the very best of the best. It's great for public in the same way f2p mobile games are great, as an endless mill of free content they can consume and forget, but once the brief flurry of monetization passes, the works become dead because there's no rights owner willing to spend the money to market or preserve the IP.
- fardo 9y ago>Problem is, material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless I wonder if Disney, which built its empire on repurposing public domain Hans Christian Anderson stories as animated films, would have agreed with your assessment. The value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale, nor is it supposed to be: the value is in being a direct, continuing, and explicitly legal source of inspiration for the new.
- moomin 9y agoHaven’t seen Shakespeare go out of business. Indeed the Arden Shakespeare show you how to make money (as does Disney): it’s the value add. Translation, curation, commentary, re-interpretation, analysis. Contrast with books written in the seventies that have neither huge followings nor electronic versions: they might as well not exist.
- HarryHirsch 9y agoThe value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale Reclam would like to have a word with you. For the non-Germans here, they are a German publisher known for their iconic yellow editions of literary classics. They got their big break in 1867 when Faust entered the public domain; their Faust edition was a cash cow, and they continued on with other authors. Later on they branched out with their own stable of authors. I'm not saying that the intangible benefits don't exist, but even from free material you can make money.
- ggm 9y agoLets hear it for Sonny Bono!
- jlgray 9y agoI always feel like the right solution would be to have a significantly shorter copyright duration, but make it extendable for a large and increasing annual fee. I don't care if Disney gets to keep the rights to Mickey Mouse. The real problem is all the other stuff that gets swept along in the bargain.
- cwkoss 9y ago+1 Annual fee starts at $10 and increases by 50% each year (or similar exponential growth function) would be wonderful. Year 2 - $15 Year 10 - ~$380 Year 20 - ~$22k Year 30 - ~$1.3M Year 40 - ~$74M Year 50 - ~$4B
- chrismorgan 9y agoThere are certain advantages to automatic copyright for individuals, and I don’t think that a short period is harmful. How about we say ten years of copyright protection on a work, then your $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year.
- cwkoss 9y agoGood pull request, merged to my local brain-repo :-)
- Spivak 9y agoI like the plan in theory but what's the justification for charging these huge sums of money except to be punitive? Why does a work have to somehow perpetually make more money? Why not have the lawyers show up in court and show that the company they represent is still actively using and making money on their copyright? If they are they get a, say 5 year, extension. Judges can use common sense to avoid shady behavior like manufacturing demand or trying to pass of a small number of sales as evidence and copyright holders aren't left with a huge bill.
- cwkoss 9y agoI believe that private ownership of culture is a cost to our society, as it restricts the rest of society from being able to use, remix and adapt that work. That cost grows as the work becomes more pervasive in the cultural zeitgeist. I think that owners of a work should repay a portion of this cost to society in return for a monopoly on that work. In an ideal world, I'd prefer some sort of "property tax" on intellectual property: annual percentage of IP's fair market value due as tax or it's released to public domain. However, I worry this scheme would be too vulnerable to gaming and manipulation as it's hard to determine the fair market price of a monopolized product. My proposed exponential renewal tax is somewhat flawed as 'cultural relevance' is only partially correlated with age of work. But, by increasing the cost of renewal each year, it would more closely model increased societal costs over time as private works become more pervasive and relevant in our culture. By imposing a time-correlated cost of retaining IP rights, it would incentivize IP owners to release non-profitable IP into the public domain instead of hoarding it.
- okonomiyaki3000 9y agoDon't get your hopes up.
- crispytx 9y agoOur copyright laws are ridiculous.
- Gustomaximus 9y agoI'm always amazed how aligned nations are on copyright. I believe US actively pushed this in trade negotiations. I assume this is why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright...
- shmerl 9y agoYes indeed, this junk spreads through WIPO.