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What’s Entering Public Domain in 2021: The Great Gatsby, Music by Duke Ellington
- calmworm 6y agohttps://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2021/ https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2021/ The actual list the article references... (and strangely, mostly plagiarizes?)
- SloopJon 6y agoI had gotten used to that site showing what is not entering the public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. (What a horrible thing to have your name on.) It's good to have something to celebrate again. It looks like Winnie-the-Pooh will be on the list next year.
- rgblambda 6y agoSonny Bono aimed for copyright to be in perpetuity. Now that's a scary thought.
- jimbob45 6y agoI’m sure this means Gatsby won’t be taught in high schools anymore because that’s a ton of money for publishers to lose out on if schools can just print out 50 copies for pennies. I’m not even mad either. No high schooler can possibly relate to that book in any meaningful way. Good forbid an English teacher picks a book palatable to high schoolers.
- dan-robertson 6y agoDo they not teach Shakespeare or early 20th century American poets either?
- Agathos 6y agoIt’s tough to read Shakespeare without some annotations, and those are generally copyrighted. Which is one reason I have never been able to find a good free ebook collection.
- postingpals 6y agoAren't teachers supposed to provide the annotations themselves with their english knowledge?
- BrianOnHN 6y agoNo, not at 45K USD/year. We're lucky if they effectively provide those copyrighted annotations.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoyeah I remember not reading any Mark Twain in high school “no high schooler can possibly relate to that book in any meaningful way” yes nobody has ever had messed up feelings about social status or unrequited love or what are you talking about
- wussboy 6y agoMight it be because if the teacher reads the n-word out loud they’ll lose their job? If they don’t read it out loud the students will pester them until they do?
- jgwil2 6y agoPretty sure GP was being ironic; they did read Mark Twain in high school despite his work being in the public domain.
- esturk 6y agoWow, the arrogance in this post to say all high schoolers can't relate to the Great Gatsby. Is this is just projection?
- Talanes 6y agoThe Great Gatsby was the only book I had to read in high school that connected with me in any lasting way. What I get out of the text has changed considerably over the years, but that doesn't make my high school self's interpretation less meaningful.
- treebog 6y agoI read the Great Gatsby in high school, not too too long ago, and it instantly became my favorite book. I would guess that English teachers pick it because it’s a short, fun read with lots of issues to discuss and lots of literary merit. I’m glad to see it’s finally in the public domain.
- khrbrt 6y agoA benefit if it being in public domain is a variety of new editions to teach from. Cheap paperbacks containing just the story and which cost just above the cost of its paper and ink. Slightly fancier versions with introductions by literary scholars. Thick annotated editions with every allusion and reference explained with lengthy footnotes.
- ahelwer 6y agoI thought you could read The Great Gatsby on Project Gutenberg for a while now? Or am I thinking of another Fitzgerald novel
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 6y agoThere's some Gutenberg affiliates set up in other countries that host content which is not public domain in the US but is public domain elsewhere (Australia and Canada have some notable additions as a result of years where they didn't line up with US law). It looks like Gatsby is on Gutenberg Australia.
- yardie 6y agoYou aren't imagining it. The Great Gatsby was in public domain for a few years until the Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 added 25 more years. This created a complications because lots of classical works that were in the public domain had to be removed from sites like Project Gutenberg. Apparently, popular, long dead authors are supposed to support their great grandkids from those royalty checks. I wrote a school book report on The Great Gatsby from the text hosted on Project Gutenberg. And when I had an interest in looking at the text again imagine my surprise to find it no longer listed.
- vuciv1 6y agohere's a silly website that takes 1984 but replaces "Big Brother" with "Facebook" its a low effort gag. https://1984butfb.com/ https://1984butfb.com/
- xwdv 6y agoCould be a bit more fun with a few other replacements and maybe tweaking the years perhaps from 1984 to 2024.
- Samantha97 6y agoThey didn't even read their own website or Ctrl f to find that they missed lowercase big brother
- spacemanmatt 6y agoI was all set to expect my childhood to enter public domain during my adulthood. Fucking DMCA.
- robin_reala 6y agoThis has nothing to do with the DMCA. You’re looking for the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- spacemanmatt 6y agoaccurate, though connected by lobbyists and beneficiaries
- danbolt 6y agoI dearly wish creators inspired by Star Wars in their childhoods could have reimagined it when they came of age.
- rriepe 6y agoIf we allowed this to happen, we'd have major motion picture Star Wars blockbusters that were basically fan fiction levels of quality. Can you imagine?
- danbolt 6y agoSounds great; sign me up! I'd love to watch a Star Wars movie with a budget under 10 million.
- steverb 6y agoYou're in luck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zCSSd8QCVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zCSSd8QCVk It's actually pretty great. For all the wrong reasons, but that doesn't detract from its greatness.
- mmhsieh 6y agoDoes anyone know if there are any rights around Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and the like?
- robin_reala 6y agoTheir original works are all in the public domain in every jurisdiction, but classically (hah) the problem has been that copyright is applied to re-set scores. Luckily, there are a good number of modern scores dedicated to the public domain that were based on scans of the originals. A good starting place is https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
- howenterprisey 6y agoIs there any way to get a hold of the originals for titles like Rhapsody in Blue?
- robin_reala 6y agoYou’d be looking for public domain scans, of which there seem to be several from 1924 at https://imslp.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue_(Gershwin%2C_George) https://imslp.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue_(Gershwin%2C_George)
- ghaff 6y agoAnd, of course, modern recordings are generally copyrighted.
- dheera 6y agoNo, although I once recorded myself playing Beethoven and posted it on Facebook and the audio got muted by a stupid algorithm that thought I was violating some Sony recording of some artist. I don't know whether to feel honored that my playing was decent enough to be (mis-)recognized by the algorithm as a professional artist or sad that I got muted.
- robin_reala 6y agoStandard Ebooks (courtesy of @acabal) has Gatsby up and available: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/f-scott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/f-scott-fitzgerald/the-gre... For my part, I added two newly available non-Conan Robert E. Howard stories to our shorts compilation: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-e-howard/short-fiction https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-e-howard/short-fict...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ignoramous 6y agoI think it would be beneficial for code (for software that's published) to be subject to these laws, too. Any one know why such laws apply to art but not to code?
- shp0ngle 6y agoWell, is there code from 1925?
- robin_reala 6y agoThere’s definitely code from earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr...
- shp0ngle 6y agoAnd I think that is, indeed, in Public Domain.
- ignoramous 6y agoPublic Domain laws vary by country. In India, works published 60 years ago enter public domain.
- syshum 6y agoDont worry I am sure an International Treaty will come along to lock that in to the 95+ year "standard" we seem to be driving to globally After all India was all set for the TPP, and it included those copyright provisions...
- robin_reala 6y agoThey do apply to code too.
- ghaff 6y agoAs robin_reala indicated, they do. This wasn't clear for along time and it didn't really matter because computer companies bundled software with their hardware; it wasn't something that anyone was particularly interested in selling independently. But this started to change and, over time, it was established that copyright did apply to software. (One reason why copyright might not have applied to software is that it's "just" a set of instructions. We're seeing this argument repeated at some level with the Google-Oracle tiff over APIs.)
- based2 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930189 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18801531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18801531 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966271 2018 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=public%20domain&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- crackerinchief 6y agoDon't worry. When China decides it's too long, we'll change it.
- ogou 6y agoTo celebrate this, the Internet Archive recently held a video contest to use public domain film and audio material from 1925. My piece won 1st place. https://archive.org/details/danse-de-alienes https://archive.org/details/danse-de-alienes