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A Mass of Copyrighted Works Will Soon Enter the Public Domain
- peterwwillis 9y agoSo Congress has 7 months to extend copyright again.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoWhich it's highly unlikely to do: 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...
- dfxm12 9y agoSort of an aside, but I love how the headline of this article: "Hollywood Says It's Not Planning Another Copyright Extension Push" implies that Congress is basically powerless against Hollywood's whims (or money).
- bluGill 9y agoIn the past they were. Congress loves celebrities as much as anyone. Play a doctors on TV and congress will ask you medical questions, and pass laws based on your "medical expertise". As a result when Hollywood asks congress listens more than they should. However there is something far more important to Congress than celebrities or money: votes. Hollywood and congress knows that there are a significant number of voters who are not happy about copyright extensions and are watching. They know very well that if a copyright extension passes some of them will lose their job, and that is not something few are willing to risk.
- fenwick67 9y agoI find this hard to swallow. I doubt Joe Sixpack cares that much about books and silent films from the twenties.
- scarface74 9y agoI think that's a lot of tech bubble thinking. The majority of people vote along party lines. Even those who don't won't have "this person voted for copyright extension" on the top of their list of concerns. Then when you back out to the primaries, how many primaries are going to be won because the incumbent voted for copyright extensions? This is like the tech hysteria against Facebook, I'm not saying it wasn't warranted, but most people who do know the details just shrugged and kept posting cat videos....
- bluGill 9y agoThe majority of people don't vote in primaries, they consider themselves independent. I don't know if they vote alone party lines, but the fact that we have switched between democrat and republican presidents regularly is proof that enough people change their vote. Even ignoring that, those who do vote parties lines and vote in primaries are also likely to be the ones doing volunteer work to get their guy elected. Make them mad and they will vote the party, but they won't do as much work and that can swing an election.
- peterwwillis 9y agoThey "consider themselves independent", but they are not independent. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/independents-outnumber-democrats-and-republicans-but-theyre-not-very-independent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/in... https://www.thenation.com/article/what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-independent-voters/ https://www.thenation.com/article/what-everyone-gets-wrong-a... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump... http://republic3-0.com/myth-independent-voter-stefan-hankin/ http://republic3-0.com/myth-independent-voter-stefan-hankin/ > the fact that we have switched between democrat and republican presidents regularly is proof that enough people change their vote Not really. Only half the eligible voters actually vote in presidential elections. Different voters come out to vote at different times in different states for different reasons, and some of those may switch their vote, but the majority vote along party lines as noted in the above articles. The presidential elections are swung by having more ideologically extreme past presidents. Two terms of Clinton led to two terms of Bush led to two terms of Obama leads into two terms of Trump, and then we'll have two terms of Bernie or something equally extreme, like a transgender asexual black mexican jew. (And I just looked it up - there is a transgender queer black mexican rabbi in Chicago, but unfortunately you can't get elected in this country without being a proud Christian)
- peterwwillis 9y agoThat's not why they're not fighting it. They're not fighting it because it takes millions of dollars to lobby and they aren't going to make millions of dollars back from films from the 1950s. Nobody will vote an incumbent congressman out of office for extending copyright.
- emodendroket 9y agoMight be obvious to most here, but the article should probably clarify that the version of the 10 Commandments being made public domain is not the famous Charlton Heston version but an earlier one.
- cat199 9y agoYet interestingly both were Cecil B DeMille productions.. kind of like the 50's one was a 'talkie remake' of this one.. interesting.
- emodendroket 9y agoHitchcock did the same thing with The Man Who Knew Too Much. I think this was actually not that uncommon in the past.
- WorldMaker 9y agoAs much as people want to complain about Hollywood remake culture today, it has very deep roots to some of Hollywood's earliest days.
- leereeves 9y agoRemakes have always been with us, but doesn't it seem like Hollywood is creating fewer originals these days?
- WorldMaker 9y agoIt seems like one of those evergreen topics that applies to every Hollywood Age. Many early Hollywood films were adaptations of books. The Golden and Silver Ages involved a lot of adaptations of plays and musicals. Greek and Biblical history/myths have always been huge recurring topics. Most of the Disney Princessess are centuries old fairy tale characters of one sort or another. As much as we can laugh at how dumb their attempt at making the Dark Universe happen this decade, Universal really did get their start by churning out as many famous monster movies as possible and then blowing early moviegoers' minds by having those monsters meet and team up; it was film making's original franchise. I don't think anyone has done a full inventory, but I think overall the risk-to-reward equations for original screenplays versus adaptations and franchises has hardly ever shifted over the years. If anything, the larger numbers of "indie" studios, non-traditional "studios" in play (Amazon, Netflix, YouTube), and the increasing ability for everyone to access filmmaking by modern technology likely lead us to a place where we may actually be at the height of original entertainment in films, whether or not Hollywood is leading or following that trend.
- neves 9y agoThe article just mention a bunch of stuff that will enter the public domain. Does anybody have a better list of significant works? I believe there must be a lot of nice music.
- emodendroket 9y agoI guess the key is just to look for anything from 1923.
- robin_reala 9y agoWikipedia to the rescue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_literature#New_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_literature#New_books and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_music#Published_popular_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_music#Published_popula... both have good lists. I’m excited as this will open up a bunch more literature (and to a lesser extent new sources of cover art) for the Standard Ebooks project I contribute to.
- bburns_km 9y agoGreat project! The books have really nice covers, and brief descriptions also - https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/
- robin_reala 9y agoThe descriptions are written by the producers, and explicitly donated to the public domain as part of the production. Covers are interesting. The imprint has gone for a “classic oil painting” style as a general rule of thumb and those need to be PD as well of course. That’s trickier than it sounds in the US, as to be PD they need to have been published in a book in the US pre-1923. For example, the edition of Crime and Punishment I worked on has an Edvard Munch as cover art.[1] I managed to find that reprinted in a copy of “Scandinavian Art”, published in the US in 1922.[2] Unfortunately just looking at the PD tags on commons.wikimedia isn’t good enough as they rarely provide proof and anyone can edit them; the project could get into real copyright trouble without having proof of PD. [1] https://github.com/standardebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky_crime-and-punishment_constance-garnett/blob/dfe4f4726c1e3541117e026193d6be7cdd785c2e/src/epub/images/cover.svg https://github.com/standardebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky_crime-an... [2] https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t8x93xv1g?urlappend=%3Bseq=591 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t8x93xv1g?urlappe...
- vitorbaptistaa 9y agoRelated website: http://publicdomainreview.org/ http://publicdomainreview.org/ review works that are entering the public domain since 2011. There are some pretty interesting stuff. Disclaimer: I work for the Open Knowledge International, which used to fund the Public Domain Review.
- punnerud 9y agoIs there any open “database” of what is open, and what is soon to be? (Other than articles. Example as CSV)
- sudouser 9y agoI remember there’s a website in french, I’ll see if I can find it edit: Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_public_domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_public_domain
- cobbzilla 9y ago"Included in the 2019 tranche: William Carlos Williams's The Great American Novel; Charlie Chaplain's The Pilgrim, and Cecil B DeMille's 10 Commandments." Anyone eagerly awaiting any other big hits from yesteryear? Which ones?
- fenwick67 9y agoThis may sound really lame but I'm excited for Bambi to be public domain (the book, not the film)
- dfxm12 9y agoAny particular reason?
- fenwick67 9y agoIt's a dark, violent Austrian novel about a deer and it just sounds really badass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi,_a_Life_in_the_Woods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi,_a_Life_in_the_Woods
- droidist2 9y agoI really want Dumbo so I can make music with it
- bdamm 9y agoPersonally I'm looking forward to Reddy Kilowatt becoming public domain.
- abetusk 9y ago[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddy_Kilowatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddy_Kilowatt
- ataturk 9y agoThat copyright law change was and is an abomination.
- cwkoss 9y agoFuck Mickey mouse
- dang 9y agoPlease don't do this here.
- brink 9y agoSince Mickey Mouse was first debuted in 1928, does this mean that Mickey Mouse will become public domain in 5 years if the copyright law doesn't change?
- examancer 9y agoMickey has been on the verge of entering the public domain for decades now. Every time it gets close Disney and other companies are successful in re-writing copyright law to whatever they want it to be. No, Mickey probably won't be in the public domain in 5 years.
- delinka 9y agoNo, Mickey Mouse is a trademark. No danger of entering the public domain if Disney maintain registration. Film that he's appeared in, however, is under copyright and yes, his earliest films could indeed fall into the public domain.
- kolpa 9y agoTrademarks are not protected from being used in works of art, only from use in branding.
- delinka 9y agoWhich is still not the "public domain."
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoNo, but trademark protections are very limited compared to copyright protections. For instance, if you wanted to make a movie like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but with cartoon characters, once Mickey Mouse's copyright has expired you would be free to use his character in the movie, you would just have to avoid using him in advertisements for the movie in a way that would mislead people into thinking the movie was affiliated with Disney.
- 9y ago
- cup-of-tea 9y agoYou can copyright putting leaves in boiling water now?! On a serious note, the damage Disney has done to culture is terrible and must be stopped.
- mkirklions 9y agoApple and Disney are awful for technology IMO. Sure they have innovations, but closing themselves off hurts growth. I had avoided full stack programming because I didnt want to deal with buying apple products to make an IOS app. We need to culturally shame people who are trying to own ideas.
- delinka 9y agoCan't you do full-stack on web-based tech and avoid Apple?
- NegativeLatency 9y agoYes, but it sounds like their def of "full-stack" includes iOS.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoMarkov chain?
- PurpleRamen 9y agoThey are just protecting their business, which is legit. It's not their fault that the flaws of the system where never really fixed since it's creation >150 years ago. Copyright was never ment to work for such long times, nor were there things like franchises and trademarks when it was created. It's time for something new, something that is more balanced for everyone. But so far nobody came up with good solutions.
- CodeMage 9y agoWhile it might not be their fault those flaws were never fixed, it certainly is their fault that they exploited those flaws willingly and knowingly, to the detriment of the culture at large. Let's stop pretending that "they are just protecting their business" is a valid defense.
- dang 9y agoUrl changed from https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/posterity-preserved.html https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/posterity-preserved.html, which points to this.
- haZard_OS 9y ago>When that expires, Steamboat Willie can be given away, sold, remixed, turned pornographic, or anything else. Rule 34 indeed. I honestly wonder, in this age of memes and YouTube, if we will see a sudden spasm of creative remixing of the newly open content. Think of the movie Kung Pow but with much more 4Chan-like variety. shudder
- wlesieutre 9y agoKnowing the internet, I assume this has already happened... only thing that changes now is they're legally allowed to do it.
- OscarCunningham 9y agoI suspect that much pornography is already legal, under the parody exemption.
- gotofritz 9y agoI am looking forward to Betty Boop remixes...
- jedberg 9y agoThis seems like a good place to throw this out there and get some feedback. My proposal on how to fix copyright: 1. Everyone must register their copyright in a searchable database. Registration is free and good for 10 years. 2. At the end of 10 years, you must renew your copyright. If you have transferred ownership, you must submit the chain of custody. Edit: New option 3a. 3. The cost of renewal will be 10% of the estimated value of the copyright to the rights holder for the next ten years. 3a. The cost of renewal will be 10% of what you made off of it in the last 10 years. If you made nothing you pay nothing. You can renew two times and pay nothing. After that you either have to commercialize or release the copyright. This fee will be on top of income taxes, but be enforced the same way, through audits similar to the IRS. This would obviate the need for 4a/b. 4a. To keep the rights holder honest, after they submit their estimated value, any other person may buy the copyright from them for 110% of the estimated value within 90 days. 4b. Another way to keep them honest instead is to make the rights holder submit tax forms to prove their estimate was valid, and pay a penalty if they were too far off. 5. If it's not in the database or the fee isn't paid, it's public domain. 6. Initial registrations for existing copyrights will be done on a rolling basis on the closest decennial anniversary of the initial copyright. The person registering must show proof that they currently own the copyright by demonstrating that they were the creator or they purchased the or inherited the rights from the creator. 7. You may extend your copyright for as long as you want, as long as you pay the fee. I think this addresses most everyone's concerns. - Disney gets to keep Mickey Mouse forever, as long as they keep making money from it. - The public no longer has to wonder if a particular work is copyrighted or not, because if it's not in the database then it isn't copyrighted. - Creators are still incentivized to create because they can hold a monopoly as long as it's valuable to them. - If you go with option 4a, then it might actually make for even greater works. For example, Fox owns the rights to Star Wars Episode 4. But that alone is not nearly as valuable to them as it is to Disney, who could put it in box sets. So Fox is now incentivized to sell their copyright since it Disney could come in and buy it for 110% of what they claim it is worth to them. This is a work in progress, and I'd love to know where I missed things.
- e40 9y agoThe cost of renewal will be 10% of the estimated value of the copyright to the rights holder for the next ten years This alone would force many things that are actively being developed into the PD, because people won't have the funds on hand. Unless I misunderstand your proposal. EDIT: And, the impact of that would be that richer companies would swoop in and get free work. Sounds bad. Real bad.
- grellas 9y agoIt may sound quaint to say, but principled application of the law is vital to a free society. Ultimately, law is about power. Under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the federal government is one of limited powers, meaning (at least it theory) that the federal government cannot lawfully act beyond the scope of its enumerated powers as expressly set forth in the constitution. So, consider how profound (again, I know it sounds quaint) is the responsibility of those elected officials to act responsibly in how they legislate about such enumerated powers. Copyright is part of the legislative power defined in Article I of the constitution. Right there in Article I, Section 8 you can see it among the fewer than 20 items set forth for what the Congress is supposed to do: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States . . . To borrow Money . . . To regulate Commerce . . . To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . To Coin Money . . . To provide for the punishment of Counterfeiting . . . To establish Post Offices . . . To promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries . . . To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court . . . To define and punish Piracies . . . To declare War . . . To raise and support Armies . . . To provide and maintain a Navy . . . And To make Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." I elided a few of the enumerated powers but the above sets forth the great majority of them. Thus, while it might be and often is argued that copyright protection does not actually achieve the things ascribed to it (promoting creative works, protecting artists’ rights in their creative works, etc.), the fact is that our laws are profoundly to the contrary: the idea of promoting the progress of science and useful arts via copyright protection (and patent protection) is right there among the fundamentals defining the essence of the legislative power of the federal government. And, to be listed at all among such powers is in itself profound because the states that formed the United States and ultimately ratified the constitution as a compact among them were jealous not to give any more authority to the federal government than was absolutely necessary. That authority was granted only on the biggest of issues and was checked and balanced by and among the legislative power (Article I), the executive power (Article II), and the judicial power (Article III). And yet there it stands: the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, "by securing for limited Times to Authors . . . the exclusive Right to their respective Writings". Right there among the powers to print money, to declare war, to lay and collect taxes, to establish federal courts, and the like. And that is why it was so utterly reprehensible when in 1998 the Congress took existing copyright terms that were to have run for 75 years and retroactively made them 95 years. Yes, the 1923 copyrights were to have expired in 1998 and, here we are, 20 years later, grateful to have them come into the public domain at last. And in what sense did this retroactive copyright extension serve to promote the progress of science and useful arts? Well, in no sense at all. It imposed new rules retroactively. It provided for absurdly long lengths of copyright protection. It had no bearing at all on the idea of promoting the arts. As such, it constituted nothing more than a crude exercise of naked power utterly divorced from the principled reason for having copyright protection at all. I believe in the value of copyright protection. I think there are excellent arguments to be made in its favor. But the cause of copyright protection was not promoted by the 1998 extension. It was significantly set back because people looking at what that Congress did are rightly revolted by the cronyism that cynically gave special favors to a privileged few and, suffering from the pain thereby inflicted on those who were needlessly burdened by completely arbitrary restrictions on being able to use works that deserved to be in the public domain, concluded that copyright protection itself is a great evil burdening society for no good purpose. To repeat, principled application of the law is vital to a free society. What happened with copyright in 1998 was a gross departure from that important truth. Let us hope it does not happen again as the 2018 expirations are about to occur.
- icc97 9y ago> many stories by P.G. Wodehouse This is excellent. Now I just hope they all get converted to text by project Gutenberg and then hopefully some mashing together with Mycroft [0] and finally I'll have Jeeves. [0]: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
- abawany 9y agoBut many Wodehouse novels, including most of the Jeeves-Wooster books, are already on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/783 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/783 . EDIT: fixed link.
- incompatible 9y agoCopyright is often so complicated. Fixed dates are easier than year of death + N years, because in some cases an author's death date isn't public. You end up with works which are technically public domain, but which can't be safely used because if you want to avoid any risk of being sued, you have to assume the worst case. Perhaps the author was young when it was created and lived to be 110. Note also that the US 1923 rule applies to the date of publication: works that were created earlier may not have been published until much later. This typically happens with photographs. Edit: and don't expect stock images sites to tell you when an image has fallen into the public domain. They will go on issuing licenses forever. The licenses are bogus, but there don't seem to be any legal repercussions.