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O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations
Sam King writes "I found the following link on the lisnews.com site: O'Reilly Adopts 1790 Copyright Durations. A small but encouraging step taken by a publisher." We should provide direct links to O'Reilly's announcement and the Founder's Copyright website.
I can't remember O'Reilly ever fucking up in a big way (alas they had their share of heat) and their right to rake a decent profit (otherwise no more O'Reilly books and now that would be a shame) goes undisputed.
I like this move. I really do.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If it was published before 1923 it is in the public domain. Otherwise here is a link to a table that has all the other cases. Until Congress extends it again
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You are confusing copyright and trademarks. Disney holds several trademarks on Mickey Mouse and his likeness. Trademarks can be renewed forever.
The copyrights for Steamboat Willy are for the screenplay and the actual movie only. These copyrights should have run out long ago.
Even if "Steamboat Willy" becomes public domain people would still have to pay Disney to use Mickey Mouse.
You're wrong on both points. Actually characters can be copyrighted. (To learn more about copyright law, try the relevant Open Directory category.) Mickey Mouse is protected both by trademark and by copyright. Also, Steamboat Willie came out in 1928, so it's still under copyright protection in the U.S. The last date whose copyrights were ever allowed to expire was 1922. So far congress just keeps on renewing 1923+ copyrights, and shows every sign of intending to keep renewing them until the end of time.
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Nature's change wasn't just motivated by employers taking away right from authors. There was and is a growing dissent from various corners of the political spectrum and of the scientific establishment that signing over to a (private) publisher copyright of a manuscript that resulted from publicly funded work is fundamentally wrong. If you read the fine print of some of those contracts, after a paper is published a scientist can often not legally use an illustration from that paper in a presentation without written consent from the publisher. Of course, most of us never bothered and got away with it, but increasignly less so.
Another facet of this is the growing prevalence of ties from academic institutions to commercial entities. Most of these agreements stipulate some form of IP transfer to the commercial side. The government research funding agencies have had an increasingly hard time to allow such wholesale transfer of publicly funded research results to the private sector. Many public grants now stipulate that private cosponsors cannot stop or influence the publication of research, other than maybe hold it up for a short time to review it for possible exploitation down the line (say, through patents).
All told, Nature's step is very commendable and is a great first step in a direction opposite from current trends.