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What Could Have Been In the Public Domain Today, But Isn't
SgtChaireBourne writes "Many works published in 1955 would have entered the public domain this year. Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an overview of the movies, books, songs and historical works that are kept out of the public domain by changes to copyright law since 1978. Instead of seeing these enter the public domain in 2012, we will have to wait until 2051 before being able to use these works without restriction."
Creative Commons isn't the public domain. The term "licencing" is enough to make it clear copyright applies, though CC tries to be generous.
First they came for Mickey mouse ...
Yes, it is a treat to democracy. The majority of people do not want this. The minority wants this. Seems like a pretty undemocratic rule to me.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No it doesn't. Copyright is by default.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Check out Creative Commons Zero.
You could not scroll down?
"The Public Domain Day 2012 web pages by Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. "
By 2051 the Multinational corporate conglomerates that hold the rights will have paid the politicians and courts to extended it to 3051 or perpetuity. That is if we make it through 2012 first!
While I don't agree with our culture being ruined by greed and believe sane copyright laws would benefit everyone, there is a very good reason the corporations are continuing to fight for copyright extension - and presumably won't stop until perpetual copyright is granted. Obviously, that reason is profit. Let's look at Happy Birthday To You as an example. From the Wikipedia entry:
in 2008, Warner collected about $5000 per day ($2 million per year) in royalties for the song.
A corporations only goal is to make profit. As we have witnessed time and time again, the corporation does not care how profit is created, human or cultural concerns are not part of the equation. It would be a failure of corporate duty to give up $2 million a year without a serious fight.
Peace,
Andy.
OH DID HE NOW? His lovely ex-wifey, who is the bitch responsible for the "forever minus a day" quote, is still a Congresswoman, and is in fact a co-sponsor of SOPA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bono_Mack
Released in 1983
Film
Literature
Music
TV
Obviously the above list is far from comprehensive and biased by the idiot who plucked thoe above from the various lists, but I'm sure you get the idea. You might also notice I was slightly biased towards early (and final) works of an artist/series as I wonder how many of these might have seen a renewed interest in the rest of their catalogue now if these initial works were entering the Public Domain.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Many folks call copyright (rather than copyright violations) "theft", but I'd go farther. Being a form of censorship, it is a crime against humanity.
I absolutely agreed with you regarding copyright law today. There is no reason to restrict works for nearly a century. It is a horrible abuse of power. And I also agree that even a much more limited copyright length (like the 14 years originally granted by the first U.S. act in 1790, with a possible 14 year extension) might need to be significantly reformed to deal with the new technologies today.
However, that's not the reason copyright existed originally. Look into the history. I mean the really early history, long before the Statute of Anne in 1709.
If you look at printing in the late 1400s and early 1500s, when copyrights were first granted, there was a real problem. Publishers at that time were really trying to disseminate knowledge for the first time in a big way. Before that, copying of books required actually scribes to write every copy, which was of course very expensive and time-consuming.
But around this time, many Italian scholars were rediscovering ancient works and coming up with their own works based on those models (and extending them), something commonly referred to as the Renaissance. This diffusion of knowledge was made possible in a large part by the publication of books. Translators worked hard to release editions of these ancient sources of knowledge, and publishers wanted to invest in a printing run.
But why should the translator and the publisher spend so much time and money when a month later a rival press could just take the text and republish it? The first copyrights were granted in Italian cities to promote the diffusion of knowledge: they encouraged authors and printers to take the time and make an investment to produce quality books. Yes, believe it or not, we have plenty of records stating that this was the purpose: rulers and councils in many Italian cities actually funded and promoted the culture of learning that was happening in the early Renaissance. And the terms generally lasted anywhere from a couple years to 10 years, only enough time for a publisher to sell off the stock from a first print run.
That's why copyright came into existence, and it may very well have contributed to the preservation of lots of knowledge from a time when publication was still such an expensive endeavor that high quality publications needed to be encouraged.
Granted, many evil things happened over the years since then. Rulers tried to suppress writings by only authorizing publication from certain publishers who wouldn't publish treasonous or seditious materials, etc. Those "copyrights" are hardly the same idea. But finally in 1709 in England, the Statute of Anne established a 7-year term for authors rather than publishers, and the idea was still to allow a short time to recoup the time and costs invested by someone writing a high-quality book.
Copyright is no longer like this. It is a travesty today. But until recent years, when reproduction costs became essentially nil for many types of media, it did serve a useful purpose. And in the early days, it truly helped disseminate important knowledge that arguably led to major historical advances.
No... copyright is by default. It is automatic. Under the Berne Convention everything that is made is automatically covered under copyright. There's a reason Slashdot has the little "comments are owned by..." at the top of every section. It is basically impossible to create anything without copyright.
One weird bit of law in all states is that you can not usually sue the owners of a company. The company yes, the owners, no.
That's not weird at all. It's practically necessary. The problem is that the owners of a company have little or no direct control over that company's actions. They merely provide the money that is used by the company's board to finance the company's operations, in exchange for which the company periodically pays them a dividend. The limit of their control over the company is that if enough of them agree they can hire and fire members of the board. They have no right to directly supervise the company's actions. They have no right to veto the company's actions. It would therefore seem a little unreasonable to hold them directly responsible for those actions they have no direct control over. The limit of their responsibility should, it seems to me, be the same as they potentially stand to profit from the actions -- i.e. their dividends. Suing a company, therefore, makes perfect sense, as doing so prevents the owners from benefitting from the company's illegal behaviour by applying a financial penalty that will, in the end, reduce the dividend that is paid to them.
Even though I am an owner of MegaEvilChemCorp no one can sue me or put me in jail for the damages MegaEvilChemCorp may do even if they blow up or poison half a state.
Holding shareholders criminally liable for a company's actions would completely destroy corporate investment as we know it. Nobody sane would be willing to invest in any companies, as they would have no way to prevent themselves from being prosecuted for crimes that may be committed in their name without their knowledge. Financing any new non-trivial business would become almost impossible.
3) Allow corporations to do the right thing. In most states if you run a company and do anything other than maximize profits you can get sued by any share holder.
This notion is based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the fiduciary responsibility of the board of a company. You are not legally required to maximize profits. In general, the law does not involve itself in the minutiae of which decisions the directors should make. The requirements are simple:
1. That they act in good faith towards the shareholders
2. That they exercise reasonable care
3. That they have a reasonable belief that the decisions they make are in the best interest of the company
The "best interest of the company" is not solely maximizing profit, and courts will allow directors to make any decision that they have reasonable grounds for (e.g. improving public perception of the company), whether the decision is good or not.
There are a few exceptions to this, but generally they only apply to companies in severe financial trouble where the directors should be anticipating that the company will be declared bankrupt in the near future (at which point they do, in some cases, have a strict duty to maximize profits, as for a company due to be wound up in the near future there are few other considerations that are in the interests of the company).
Typically, directors are only successfully sued when they have acted fraudulently for personal gain or for gain of their associates at the expense of the shareholders.
IANAL, but I have researched this in depth due to getting pissed off with the constant anti-corporate propaganda you get in places like this.
No. ALL works are automatically under copyright under the laws of most countries. What CC0 does is attempt to waive the rights under copyright law permanently. It is not actually releasing it into the public domain. The result is _extremely_ similar but not exactly coextensive. The most telling difference is that if you read the information, they specifically state that you cannot mark PD material as being CC0 and you cannot mark CC0 material as PD.
Personally, I think that groups that like CC should start challenging them in lawsuits. Just to cement their position in the law and take away a lot of the problems involving the uncertainty. Especially with CC0, because copyright law does not really contemplate people doing that (which should be pretty obvious when you realize who is actually writing those laws).
Copyright is implicit in all countries that have modified their laws to comply with the Berne Convention. Which the U.S. did in 1978 IIRC. But you need to register the copyright in order to sue for damages.