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George Orwell is out of copyright. What happens now?
- paulgb 6y agoNote that while this applies to the UK [edit: not US, thanks boomboomsubban] (and some other life+70 countries), the copyright on his work has already expired in some countries. In Canada, the copyright term is life + 50 rather than life + 70, the minimum under the Berne Convention. In Australia, only authors who died after 1955 (Orwell died in 1950) get life + 70; authors such as Orwell are "grandfathered in" to life + 50. IIRC (although I can't find a source now), this confusing patchwork of copyright was the root cause behind the infamous deletion of some copies of 1984 from Kindles: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>Note that while this applies to the US It doesn't. His books are still covered under whatever law set up 95 years since publication, so it's a decade until his earliest releases enter public domain and ~25 for 1984.
- paulgb 6y agoYou're right, thanks. I've edited it.
- m463 6y agoOn the other hand, the US gets The Great Gatsby today
- rriepe 6y agoAnd just in time!
- MichaelZuo 6y agoDo you know how this interacts with NAFTA 2.0? If a work can be used for profit in Canada and not in the US...
- quercusa 6y agoThat would be the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- 082349872349872 6y agoThanks, that explains why Such Such Were The Joys is available on an australian site, yet the TFA seemed to say it was still tied up. (I wonder to what degree my heterodox take on 1984 is due to the fact that I read SSWtJ, in combination with The Spike and other essays, well before having read 1984 itself?)
- bawolff 6y ago> In Canada, the copyright term is life + 50 Not for long, trump pressured us to change to life+70 which is probably coming sometime next year. :(
- mcv 6y agoWhy is life+70 so standard? Even life+50 seems excessive. I can understand life, I can understand protecting copyright for a number of years after death so something written just before an author's death still benefits their family. But to preserver the copyright of works written when they were young, for literal generations after their death, that's just plain ridiculous. Also, life shouldn't even matter once the copyright is not in the hands of the original author anymore. Just give copyright a set length from time of publication (30, 50, or even 70 if necessary), unless it's held by the original author, in which case it's the maximum of life or that number. That already seems way more than necessary. Anything more than that is just monopolisation of culture and has nothing to do with protecting the interests of the author or the initial publisher.
- kwere 6y agolaugh in Disney copyrigths...
- heelix 6y agoI look forward to some interesting Disney adaptations. Wonder how they will portray the Eastasia princess.
- jinpa_zangpo 6y agoI think a Disney version of Animal Farm is more likely. Animated talking animals are Disney's wheelhouse. I can see Napoleon and Snowball singing a duet as the opening song.
- xkde 6y agoIt’s been done: https://youtu.be/2b-CMtKhTl0 https://youtu.be/2b-CMtKhTl0 Though I suppose we’re not above remakes.
- pwdisswordfish5 6y agoRight, there’s still the photorealistic CGI version to be made.
- tgv 6y agoFollowed by the "live action remake".
- siltpotato 6y agoAh, but there's already been a live action Animal Farm as well. Hmm, what other territory can be breached?
- WarGames0 6y agoDirected by Michael Bay
- telesilla 6y agoThis version if I recall retains the horror aspect? What worries me is when they change the ending for some disturbing kind of happy ever after, the kind I can't imagine. Like what they did to the Little Mermaid. Next they'll be making a version of the Happy Prince (Hans Christian Anderson) where he remains a gold statue and keeps his jewels.
- HengYeDev 6y agoThe U.S. 3-letter-agencies can put 1984 into the real world without copyright issues now
- erikbye 6y agoYou think we are not there and beyond yet?
- lukifer 6y ago"Orwell's 1984... is not a fantasy of the future, but a parable of the present." - Robert Anton Wilson
- sideshowb 6y agoWe took a different direction. No need for violent suppression of truth when it's easier to metaphorically bury it in bs
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoA mixture of 1984 (e.g. the endless war) and Brave New World (e.g. hype and propaganda).
- deelowe 6y agoAnd arguably more so the latter than the former.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y agobeing intellectually drowned in meaningless entertainment is the fate of the prols in 1984. > There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs
- waterhouse 6y agoSo someone could publish a version of 1984 that had certain characters completely expunged from the text, and others added.
- 5cotto 6y agoIronic considering Orwell plagiarized the plot of 1984 in the first place.
- rightbyte 6y agoPlagiarized of what by who?
- HarryHirsch 6y agoHe may be talking about the underrated Swastika Nights. A new world, after memory of the old one has been erased is part of the plot, as is a secret manuscript. That said, stories and plots have been retold ever since the beginning of literature. Here's a lovely article about various versions of the well-known story about the Baalshem being asked to intercede for a sick child: https://brill.com/view/journals/jjtp/22/2/article-p127_2.xml https://brill.com/view/journals/jjtp/22/2/article-p127_2.xml
- grzm 6y agoYevgeny Zamyatin's We. (1921) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)
- UncleSlacky 6y agoAlso Jack London's "The Iron Heel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel
- jonny_eh 6y agoTaking inspiration isn't plagiarism
- YuccaGloriosa 6y ago"a robot from 1984" Isn't that a reference to a robot dancing style popularised around the time period of the year 1984. Not robots dancing in the book 1984?
- Digit-Al 6y agoYes. The actual lyric is "dancing to electropop like a robot from 1984" and it does, indeed, refer to a robotic dance style done to electronic pop music. A dance style that is always more effective when aided by strobe lights. Also, there were no robots in the book "1984".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI like that this story examples how creativity can ramp up, when copyright gets out of the way.
- njharman 6y agoAnd how the copyright monopoly robs our culture. With some of David Bowie's contribution to Art being denied and forever lost.
- atlgator 6y agoNow they turn 1984 into an instruction pamphlet.
- PsyCrops 6y agoOr a microdot on playing cards distributed to communist countries.. similar to this concept: https://bicyclecards.com/article/a-map-inside-the-cards/ https://bicyclecards.com/article/a-map-inside-the-cards/
- mark_l_watson 6y agoHe was so far ahead of his time. I just started reading “Burmese Days” which reflects his life as a policeman in the British Empire, experiences that affected his views on life.
- JNRowe 6y agoI recently pimped an Orwell biography in a different thread¹, but I'll do so again. Dorian Lynskey's The Ministry of Truth is a really well written and thoroughly researched treatise on Orwell. I found the passage of his life from Eton through Spain to his final books far more interesting than his actual writings(with the possible exception of Road to Wigan Pier). ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25474279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25474279
- mhh__ 6y agoHis "As I please" lectures, particularly on the practice of calling people fascists, could've been written tomorrow they're so prescient.
- hertzrat 6y agoI strongly recommend down and out in London and Paris as well. He decides to live as realistically similar to a poor person for a while in a gonzo-like journalism experiment with a lot of interesting scenes and observations
- motohagiography 6y agoI would expect we can finally release editions with new introductions that address important criticisms of Orwell's privileged perspective, written by people of historically underrepresented groups, use them as a tool for educators to teach young people about the arrogance of male protagonists clinging to ideals of individualism that were artifacts of colonial domination, and without all the problematic representations of institutions of global justice. Surely.
- choward 6y agoCopyright lasts way too long.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoAgree. A year seems a lot more reasonable.
- esarbe 6y agoAre you sure about that? Myself, I think that copyright today has been grotesquely distorted away from its original intent; the furthering of the arts. Especially in the U.S. and E.U., the media oligopoly has had enormous success in transforming (cough perverting) copyright into a mechanism that benefits the copyright holder to the detriment of anyone else. But we see that copyright can also be an effective tool for protection of the arts and sciences; see copyleft. Here we have an ingenious way of turning copyright on it's head, by protecting the rights of all involved parties. (Stallman might be a nutcase, but if that's the case, he's a genius nutcase.) So I think it's fair to have 'longer' copyright periods. Longer than a year, I mean. The duration we have in patent law (~20 years) seems rather fair to me. Enough to turn (some) profit, not enough to rob four generations of the stories and characters that were an important part of their childhood's culture.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoI was being somewhat glib. I guess I should’ve included some kind of sarcmark. I agree of course that it’s noble to find less pathological ways to protect the people who truly create. I don’t know if copyright is the right solution (or if it’s not), or what kind of timeframe would bring the most benefit with the least harm. But I certainly think the current implementation is so absurd as to be worth challenging.
- esarbe 6y ago> But I certainly think the current implementation is so absurd as to be worth challenging. Absolutely.
- elvis70 6y agoI guess that doesn't apply to translations?
- retrac 6y agoGenerally, translations of literature are considered copyrightable in their own right, as translating literature is fundamentally a creative act. The translator would hold a copyright for their specific translation.
- lordleft 6y agoI was surprised that Orwell’s work wasn’t under more permissive copyright terms given his democratic socialism. I’m looking forward to his work reaching more people.
- slim 6y agoin his time copyright was not limiting the spread of knowledge an culture a the time, since distribution of printed books was capped by the logistics. it could easily take 50 years for your book to reach every reader on the planet
- samizdis 6y agoFWIW, most of Orwell's works, including essays, have been available for many years at https://orwell.ru/ https://orwell.ru/ These include "Such, such were the joys", referenced in the Guardian article when it states: "Neither will anyone be allowed to trespass on all the material that came to light post-1950 and which Davison painstakingly assembled in his compendious George Orwell: The Complete Works (1998). This includes Such, Such Were the Joys, the notorious account of his tribulations at a character-forming Sussex prep school, first published in the US in 1952 but not issued in the UK until as late as 1968, for fear of libel proceedings." That essay is here, and has been for a long time: https://orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys https://orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys
- tashi 6y agoI think you might be misunderstanding the point of the article. They're talking about the hurdles you have to jump in order to reprint or adapt his writings, not just read them.
- humaniania 6y agoThat makes me wonder why Russia would be interested in spreading Orwell's ideas.
- lasagnaphil 6y agoI think you're overthinking this. it probably would be just a Russian hobbyist who's interested in archiving Orwell's works. (Also since these are in the public domain in Russian territory)
- throwaway2245 6y agoThis makes me wonder if people really accept the Western media's point of view that a population of 150 million act in unison as a singular being named "Russia".
- 411111111111111 6y agoThe "Russia" he referenced isn't the general population. It's the political party that's in power, influencing the media and allowing/forbidding things to be associated with it. Almost all nations actively shape their image, Russia is one of them. (Just as the usa)
- ofrzeta 6y agoFor the record, German Wikipedia has a page with creators who died 70 years ago [1]. I couldn't find a corresponding page in the English Wikipedia but as it's a list it doesn't matter too much (apart from the links to the respective WP articles). [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_Domain_Day/2021_in_Public_Domain https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_Domain_Day/20...
- capdeck 6y agoWhat used to be fiction now is just news.
- tinus_hn 6y agoGovernments around the world start copying it like madmen!
- netmonk 6y agoThat is why every gov is trying to copy 1984 in this dramatic and catastrophic covid19 epidemia. They dont have to pay any fee to the original author.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoCan you elaborate? At least here in the USA the government responses have been so spotty, inconsistently enforced, and half hearted that we seem to have the worst of all outcomes. (Elevated death rate, recurring lockdowns, ongoing community spread of the virus.)
- kodah 6y agoReality steals his stories, duh
- scott-smith_us 6y ago"New, reformulated George Orwell v2" (since it's an entirely new product, copyright starts over)
- Jemm 6y agoWhat happens now is that Disney creates an entire franchise around 1984 and children will only know the Disney version.
- jeegsy 6y agoor the children discover 1984 later when they are older
- anonymous344 6y agoWhat is the difference if a book goes to no-copyright ? It barely does not affect the price - every dealer still want it's cut and you are stuck to your digital platform provider anyway..so pay up. And individuals can refer to the books anyway..so what's th point? Art I understand, it's easy to copy photo or painting and put up a webshop selling a mug with photo of the painting on it.. but again if it's 100 year old painting..isn't there ANY other picture for your cup that is better ?