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Why Isn't Gatsby in the Public Domain?
- chimeracoder 13y agoA similar HN post, which may be of interest: "What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2012?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802849 I find this overextension of copyright laws maddeningly frustrating. My previous comment (unfortunately) still stands: Also still under copyright: "I Have a Dream" until 2038[1]. This is particularly frustrating because the copyright holders include the estate of the person who delivered the speech, but not the estate of the two other people who wrote it (and likely most of it) - not to mention the fact that, by any web-era definition, it was a public performance and also a 'general publication'. "Happy Birthday" (certainly in the EU until 2016, and potentially in the US too until 2030, though this is disputed[2]). There is also one movie - whose name escapes me now - which entered the public domain and was then put back under copyright protection subsequently. In the case of "I Have a Dream", think of the societal cost of raising two generations of students without a complete copy of the speech in their textbooks (as is generally the case). Alternatively, think of how a 2012 version of "I Have a Dream" would happen today. If hundreds of cell phone recordings of the speech were distributed halfway around the world within mere minutes after the speech, of what relevance would copyright protection be? [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_disput.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_disput.... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
- Guvante 13y ago[It's a Wonderful Life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Its_a_Wonderful_Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Its_a_Wonderful_Life) I have heard on several occasions that the reason it is currently so popular is because it went into the Public Domain and was shown on many channels due to this. Whether that is actually the case no one knows for sure.
- wisty 13y agoIt's also just a fantastic movie. It's kind of like "A Christmas Carol", but instead of Ebenezer Scrooge being saved, it's the guy who's standing up to him. It's warm, it's funny, and it asks a lot of big questions. And it doesn't appeal to a single viewer. And it's not too heavy, either - Citizen Kane might be better, but it's not really a film you can get a 6 year old to watch. There's very few movies which are so critically acclaimed (top 100), which can appeal to adults and kids alike. It's subject is both completely commonplace, and the most important thing there is. Also, how many good Christmas movies are there? It's got to be in the top 5 Christmas films, at least.
- lmm 13y agoAnd yet it was unsuccessful on initial release, both critically and commercially. (And while the same can be said of several films now considered classics, such films were generally unconventional (at least for their time) in a way that It's a Wonderful Life really isn't)
- advice4u 13y agoWhich only makes it more remarkable that its popularity continues to grow. That fact suggests there is a special timelessness to the film, since as you say most classics are either prototypical, unconventional, or artistically innovative (like, as was mentioned, Citizen Kane). The closest analogy I can think of while remaining in the realm of the arts is Vermeer, who was a fairly typical Dutch genre painter unrecognized in his time and ignored for two centuries. Nowadays he is popular and beloved, but unlike Rembrandt who is held as a great master or van Gogh who is held as a quixotic genius, Vermeer himself is taken as wholly mundane; his works simply have some "je ne sais quoi" that resonates with the average person.
- throwaway1980 13y agoIn my experience, "A man who hates his life to the point of suicide is shown by a guardian angel how much the other people around him depend on him. As a result of seeing what the world would be like without him, he changes his mind about the suicide and ends up embracing the life he has, recognizing the simple yet wonderful things about it for what they are." is not a conventional Hollywood story. Do you have any other examples? I'm mostly interested not because I want to prove you wrong, but because I actually want to be wrong and I want to watch these movies if they exist. Groundhog Day is the only other one that comes to mind.
- hammock 13y agoThe shorter the copyright, the less incentive there is to create something timeless and lasting (if copyright terms provide incentive to invest in creative work). If spoils are only provided for life+70 years, then an artist may have little incentive to create something that could be enjoyed for a period longer than that.
- malnourish 13y agoNo incentive? What about the incentive of enduring name recognition, creating timeless works, and creating art? There is incentive that transcends monetary gain and for many artists that is what they're after. I am not saying they shouldn't be compensated for their work, if they desire compensation.
- ckannan90 13y agoThat's such a strange thing to say. When artists create their work, do they rank them by the estimated number of years of their legacy, and discard the ones that fall outside of the copyrightable timeframe? I mean, are you implying there are artists out there who aren't creating works because they feel that this one is definitely a "life+75" piece of work, and so what's the point if all I get is life+70?
- hammock 13y agoImagine a copyright that lasts only one day. Would you ever write something to appeal to an international audience? There wouldn't be time enough to translate it. Imagine someone lives beneath a volcano and knows that at some point an eruption will destroy his house such that he no longer extracts economic benefit from it. Do you think that the way he builds his house (e.g. using straw, or stone) will differ based on whether the eruptions come every 10 years or every 100? If artists are motivated by the economic incentive afforded by copyright, then the level of that motivation is variable based on the length of copyright.
- nano111 13y agoAre you saying that home builders and engineers should get paid royalties for as long as the house stands?
- krenoten 13y agoFans of the cult movie "The Room" may be interested in knowing that Tommy Wiseau spent a substantial amount of the total budget on securing rights to sing "Happy Birthday".
- wwweston 13y agoBecause otherwise, Fitzgerald wouldn't have or have had any incentive to invest in creative work?
- CamperBob2 13y agoHow long should he or his estate be allowed to milk the cash cow?
- jlgreco 13y ago"What's that? You mean in 2013 people will be able to read my book for free? Well fuck it, I'll just go have another drink instead." (Actually to be fair, I don't think "instead" is quite the right word there.)
- DanBC 13y agoDon't joke. Disney honestly think like that. When home video was introduced they couldn't get their heads round the fact that they wouldn't know how many people would be sitting round the tv watching a movie, and thus Disney wouldn't be able to charge all of these people. Some of them would be watching for free! Disney have introduced things like single watch video tape (need to be sent back somewhere to be rewound); limited life DVD (special materials, sent in sealed envelope, as soon as it's opened it starts to oxidise); and they still have pretty horrible unskippable trailers and warnings and etc.
- jlgreco 13y agoEh, in the case of Disney it seems more like they are worried about copyright terms for their stuff ending imminently, not in a hundred or so years. That's why they only threw on a few more decades (of course I expect them to go at it again when that extra time runs out) and didn't start that fight much earlier than they did. They still made that stuff after all, even during a time when copyrights were shorter, then they decided to get it raised.
- 300bps 13y ago
- marquis 13y agoWell, I am reading Gatsby again right now free on my Kindle in view of seeing the film next week. It's available on http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041.txt. Is this illegal for me to bring my Kindle to the U.S.? The same book search on http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=gatsby http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=gatsby shows nothing.
- minopret 13y agoYes, The Great Gatsby entered the public domain January 1, 2011, in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia that observe copyright for the author's lifetime plus 70 years. F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940. But in the United States, under the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1988, The Great Gatsby seems to be protected until 95 years after its first publication, which was in 1925. That may mean January 1, 2021. Project Gutenberg is well aware of the copyright terms in the countries where it operates. I am not a lawyer. It seems to me that copyright has nothing to do with your possession of a work that you obtained legally. It involves publication, duplication, public performance, and so on. A bit more about The Great Gatsby and copyright is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/09/robert-mccrum-copyright-law-kindle http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/09/robert-mccrum-co... About copyright terms in various countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_... (While we're discussing copyright for classic books, some might be interested to learn about the copyright for Peter Pan.)
- apotheon 13y agoI wouldn't put it past the copyright cartels in the US to find some way to bend copyright law to go after people bringing copies of books into the US, even just for personal use, that were obtained in a manner that would be considered illegal in the US. On the other hand, in this particular case, I don't see how the "offender" would ever even get on the cartels' radar for the act of bringing a Kindle (in personal luggage) loaded with books under copyright in the US and in the public domain elsewhere across international borders.
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- vy8vWJlco 13y agoThe article mentions the TPP is on the horizon, which recently got a new trade representative/negotiator in the US. Here is an email campaign to nag him towards good stewardship, for those interested: http://www.openmedia.org/froman?utm_campaign=Froman http://www.openmedia.org/froman?utm_campaign=Froman The EFF also has a summary of the changeover: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647596
- javert 13y agoIf you create something, it belongs to you. I guess somebody didn't learn this lesson in kindergarten, and still wants to whine and complain in an effort to effectively nationalize what is rightfully private property.
- imichael 13y agoI suppose you begin to learn what is ethical and what isn't in kindergarten. What's legal is an entirely different matter. Copyright is just a government regulation.
- CamperBob2 13y ago"Hey, wait, get your own dirt." -- God. "Hey, wait, get your own ideas." -- Society.
- minopret 13y agoIn theory it's the distinctive manner of expressing ideas that is protected. We know that in practice it's complicated.
- CamperBob2 13y agoPoint being, Fitzgerald did not, and could not, do his work in a vacuum. Copyright has to be a limited bargain, or else it amounts to cultural theft.
- crabasa 13y agoI'm not sure what you were taught in school, but there are massive differences between physical property and intellectual property. The very notion of intellectual property, the assignment of rights and their enforcement by governments is quite new: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
- pfranz 13y agoThe original purpose of IP laws are an agreement with society that the author would get a temporary monopoly (including legal protection) in exchange donating it society after a reasonable amount of time. The alternative is keeping it a trade secret, which can restrict what you can do with your idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
- danso 13y agoKind of funny that people are talking about Fitzgerald and the rights to make money off of "Gatsby". He obviously intended to make a living off of the book but it didnt sell well. He was paid less than $2,000 for the book and sold the movie rights for $16,666...which is roughly $200K in today's money. http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/money-behind-great-gatsby-fitzgerald-adaptations http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/money-behind-great-ga... Too bad the book never got the recognition it deserved in his lifetime.
- jlgray 13y agoAuthors in Fitzgerald's time made their money off of short stories. He was apparently making $4,000 per story. http://www.people.vcu.edu/~bmangum/fitzstories.html http://www.people.vcu.edu/~bmangum/fitzstories.html I've also heard that all the 19th century novels were so long because originally they were serialized, and the author was basically paid per chapter.
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago>>I've also heard that all the 19th century novels were so long because originally they were serialized, and the author was basically paid per chapter. That's exactly how A Tale of Two Cities was written.
- commandar 13y agoThat's how Dickens wrote most of his novels, actually.
- abrowne 13y agoDumas’s complete works are over 100,000 pages in part because he was paid by the line. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/behind-iron-mask-black-count/?pagination=false http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/behind-...
- j7 13y agoAlthough to me the book is much more valuable, making $200k off of it is not bad.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoAmusingly, I wanted to read Gatsby on a plane trip, so at the airport I Googled for it and downloaded the PDF from some Australian university's site. Then I read the whole thing. Later someone mentioned that it was still copyrighted and I argued that obviously not, it was freely available. But apparently not in the USA :-/
- rcfox 13y agoThere are many things that you can download for free off the Internet. That doesn't mean that they aren't protected by copyright.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoIt seemed like a reasonable assumption that a 90-year-old book was in the public domain.
- davidjohnstone 13y agoAustralia has an author's death plus fifty years copyright expiration for books where the author died in or before 1954. Unfortunately, I think we're "catching up" to the US with our copyright laws. There's http://gutenberg.net.au/ http://gutenberg.net.au/ (no formal relationship with Project Gutenberg) which makes works available that are public domain in Australia (but not the US), and this has The Great Gatsby.
- jopof 13y agoThey may be copyrighted, but they aren't "protected".
- dredmorbius 13y agoThe broader point is that material which is lawfully distributable in some jurisdictions is not legal in others.
- skylan_q 13y agoIf there isn't copyright protection on this work, no one will want to write another book again!
- ekianjo 13y agoHuh? Who is saying no protection is needed? What we are saying is that the protection is far too long.
- eikenberry 13y agoAnd no restrictions on non-commercial use. Don't forget that.
- Zimahl 13y agoI find it odd that we protect one segment of creatives and not another. Artists get these insane protections yet if you invent something it's up to 24 years and only if you want to spend the time and money getting the protection. What an insane racket.
- acadien 13y agoAre you arguing that patents should have as long a lifetime as copyright?? Also what country has a 24 year patent protection?
- Zimahl 13y agoI'm not saying that at all. I frankly don't think copyright should be more than maybe 30 years. If you can't make money on it by then maybe someone else can. I don't have much experience with patents but thought I had read that they were 12 and renewable with maintenance for another 12. I guess I was wrong.
- skore 13y ago> I don't have much experience with patents[...] Usually a good idea to research your opinions further into the realm of facts before posting, then.
- Zigurd 13y agoIt may be odd, but it is predictable. Patent monopolies are a balance between corporations: Some licensees, some licencors. They spend about equal amounts of money influencing legislation. Publishers and media consumers have a less balanced relationship. Publishers can spend more to influence legislation. So, in practice, copyright monopolies go on forever.
- zdean 13y agoThis is an interesting take on the correlation/causation between the impending expirations of the Mickey Mouse copyright and the subsequent extensions of the copyright duration over the past century: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090811/0123105835.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090811/0123105835.shtml
- jstalin 13y agoThe original US copyright act protected works for 14 years and was renewable for an additional 14 if the author was alive. I think that's reasonable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
- tekacs 13y agoUS patents last 20 years with design patents lasting 14 years. Whilst copyright and patents aren't directly comparable (design patents come close) it's hard to see how the size of this disparity makes any sense. Engineers keep creating their entire lives, if they can help it. Why incentivise artists to capitalise endlessly on their 'one big break'? :/ Edit: or indeed by endlessly charging licensing fees for their particular idea, which is inexplicably considered to be tremendously more timeless than a similar concept in engineering. :/
- SEMW 13y agoIMO, the length of utility patents should be guarded way more jealously than the length of copyright. Unlike copyright, a patent gives you a true monopoly over its subject - you can prevent other people from using an idea even if they came up with it independently. At their worst, patents can stifle further developments in a field. Copyright, even with a ridiculously long term, at least has the property that you can't use it to stop other people doing things independently, so it can't block whole fields in the same way. So the length disparity isn't necessarily unjustifiable.
- Tycho 13y agoBig false dichotomy. That director most likely could have made Romeo and Julet even if they'd had to pay a licence fee, just like how he's now managed to make a film adaptation of Gatsby, which will likely also be a box office success and enrich the culture of film. This really just boils down to some people being mad that they can't make money off derivative works because other people are making money off the original work. Boo hoo.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- caycep 13y agoI think its in the public domain in other countries (i.e. australia)...silly that you could get it for free down there and schlep it back here.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- crugej 13y agoSo the company who owns the rights to it can make a nice chunk of change off new book purchases (especially the purchases made by the buzz from the movie).
- Eva_Peron 13y agoMeyer Wolfsheim would never hear of it. :-)
- sage_joch 13y agoI argued in a previous thread that there is nothing morally wrong with pirating older works like The Great Gatsby. Unfortunately, that doesn't help with higher-budget derivative works, but it's a start.
- sytelus 13y agoIt's a fashion to bash copyright laws but lot of people forget that without economic instrument called copyrights it would be almost impossible to produce/consume works that bears high risk/investment. If you had a house, you don't expect it to become part of public domain after 100 years. You neither expect wooden table you made in weekend or jewelry you designed to be automatically in public domain after X years. Infect you would probably argue that government has no right to confiscate your property and it should rather be inherited by whomever you desire forever after your death. Why music/books/software that you create should be any different?
- fleitz 13y agoBecause if your neighbour builds a house you still have one. The idea behind copyright is to enrich the public domain, not to enrich rights holders.
- jopof 13y agoEstate tax is well-supported. We don't need no aristocracy.
- darkarmani 13y ago> It's a fashion to bash copyright laws but lot of people forget that without economic instrument called copyrights it would be almost impossible to produce/consume works that bears high risk/investment. What are you talking about? No one has a problem with limited term copyright like you are talking about. We have a problem with infinite term copyright. How does retroactively extending copyright length provide any of the benefits you are claiming? > Why music/books/software that you create should be any different? They aren't any different. You are allowed to bequeath music, books, software (sometimes) to people. Haven't you ever given a CD away? If you are trying to refer to intellectual property, then you are talking about a made-up right. The only reason we even grant this made-up right is because there is a quid pro quo. If there is no cultural/societal benefit to enforcing this made-up right, then why shouldn't we unmake it?
- icebraining 13y ago
- eikenberry 13y agoThe only ethical action is to ignore copyright. Publish under CC0/public-domain. Share with your family, with your friends, with everyone. Download to your hearts content. There is no copyright.
- katbyte 13y ago> There is no copyright. Well its definitely not hard to find pretty much anything even somewhat popular for download on the internet somewhere despite no small effort to prevent it.
- bydo 13y agoYou guys ever read 'Melancholy Elephants' by Spider Robinson? http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
- ck2 13y agoJust like everything else in this country, because: profit. Why does the health care system suck? because: profit. Why do our politicians suck? because: profit. Why do we go into war without a care? because: profit. Why is corn syrup subsidized but not salad? because: profit. Yay 'murica.
- ankitml 13y agoSome governments just want to watch the world burn.
- jakerocheleau 13y agoThen the members of those governments should be indicted on a long list of felony charges against the rights of human beings on this planet. The general people suffer because all the money addicts need their fix, and so they pay our politicians to change the laws to accommodate their needs. They don't care about us and they never will as long as they control the printing presses.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- patrickg 13y agoThe (at least here in Germany) well known book "Mein Kampf" by Hitler loses it's copyright in 2016. The state of Bavaria uses copyright law (German: Urheberrecht) to disallow any distribution of the book. There is an ongoing discussion how the Government can prohibit future distribution of the book, now that it goes into public domain. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf)
- NickPollard 13y agoIt's curious to me that the government (local government in this case, it appears) would want to censor that book. The whole idea of freedom is that people should be free to make up their own mind, and being able to study what Hitler wrote is important to a study of history. My parents have a copy of Mein Kampf on their bookshelf; not because they're Nazis but because it tells us a lot about what happened.
- arethuza 13y agoI think it is a misguided, but also completely understandable, desire on the part of modern Germans to be seen to completely disassociate themselves from their ghastly past.
- VLM 13y agoI had (have?) a copy as one of many textbooks for a Holocaust class. Its pretty crazy to read because quite a few things from the 30s and 40s turned out just like planned in the book. Deja Vu feelings all thru. Which led to in class discussions about which modern book, if any, seems equally likely to predict the future. Some peak oil classics were discussed, Camp of the Saints was discussed, a couple others. The unabomber ramblings and quite a few others got discredited. Lots of in class discussion about why the events of WWII seemed inevitable, why was the only response to his very public plans was eventually the D-Day invasion and is that right or wrong way to do it and how so. Its a great book for encouraging in class discussion and hopefully once its finally liberated more history classes and liberal arts synthesis classes will use it as a resource. This is the academic tragedy of copyright. We have better educational materials for the Civil War than WWII because memoirs and such are free from the civil war.
- yarrel 13y agoArticle doesn't answer question posed in title.
- pseingatl 13y agoBut if Gatsby is not in the public domain, who owns it? If Fitzgerald has no living heirs, who owns the property rights? These would normally transfer to the state of his heirs' residence at the time of their death like any other abandoned property. In the U.S. at least, intellectual property owned (as opposed to licensed) by states is in the public domain. So wouldn't Gatsby be in the public domain by this method, regardless of copyright? In other words, copyright is a property right, but when there is no one left to exercise that right, the property escheats to the state and thereby becomes property of all.
- jccalhoun 13y agoHe had a daughter who went on to have 4 kids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Scott_Fitzgerald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Scott_Fitzgerald So presumably they get the money.
- gluejar 13y agoIf you're in Australia or Canada, you can find Gatsby links for your kindle or ipad at http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-legal-to-download-great-gatsby.html http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-legal-to-downl... If you're in the US or Europe, I'd advise you not to find those links.
- nhangen 13y agoThe public didn't write it, Mr. Fitzgerald did. Therefore, both he and his heirs are entitled to reap the profits of that work. I have zero problems with literature holding copyright for as long as someone is willing to manage that copyright.