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."

Comments

Brought to you by:

[kurt555gs]

The Sonny Bono copyright extension act, and the DMCA are brought to you be the same greedy evil fucks that are now serving up SOPA / Protect IP.

Looks like the same Capitalism that ended Communism in the 90's will end Democracy in 2012!

It's for your protection.

Think of the children.

Ugh!

Re:Brought to you by:

[dbet]

Blame the people who keep electing them. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's people you know.

Re:Brought to you by:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well WHO THE HELL are we supposed to elect? when they are ALL GREEDY FUCKWITS!!!

Re:Brought to you by:

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no difference who gets elected, as long as companies can "donate" to politicians during their campaign, then they lobby and create laws as these companies want them to be.

The only solution would be to forbid such donations and treat them as corruption, and all the elections to be sponsored only by the state equally for all the candidates that participate in the election.

Also, any officials that come from big companies should be monitored for conflict of interests during their term and punished if they are proved to serve their company's interests instead of the state's.

Re:Brought to you by:

[houstonbofh]

Start early, before the primaries. Then you might have a chance of getting a real person on the ballot. If you just show up late to vote and bitch, it is STILL your fault.

Re:Brought to you by:

[desdinova 216]

But sadly that will never happen because the people who are affected by election rules make them.

Re:Brought to you by:

[SlippyToad]

And what prevents Disney from creating more Mickey Mouse cartoons is that they have no incentive to be creative anymore since no one alive today at Disney was involved in those early cartoons, no one today had to do anything particularly creative to succeed at Disney.

Consider that Disney's only films of note for the last 20 years have been Pixar movies, and that virtually every other thing they've done has been completely forgettable? Of course the irony is Disney's major successes after Mickey Mouse and crew were almost all public domain fairy tales. No, there is not a lot of creativity going on at Disney anymore. This is what happens when you can milk a dead teat.

I won't go into the eventual disappearance of Mickey Mouse from popular culture as the generations that grew up with a living creator of the art around pass away. The drivel that Disney puts out now as original material, aside from the Pixar stuff, is eminently forgettable. They're digging their own grave as an organization by creating a scenario where they can perpetually rest on their laurels.

Re:Brought to you by:

[martyros]

Of course the irony is Disney's major successes after Mickey Mouse and crew were almost all public domain fairy tales.

And even more ironically, under today's laws, some of those would still have been under copyright by the time the movies were made. Lewis Carrol died in 1898, so his estate would hold have held the copyright until 1968 -- 17 years after Disney made the film in 1951.

Re:Brought to you by:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!

Bill Gates worked hard to become rich! ..wait, wasn't his family rich anyway? They did pay a small fortune to keep his arse out of jail when he was caught using CPU time at university to compile software. I guess that would apply to anybody who's poor, too - if you can afford it, you don't get a date in court.

But that really means there are two laws - one for the rich who can afford to buy their way out of legal trouble, and one for the poor, who can't. That'd sum America up nicely. Be lucky, make a few million, no law is an obstruction for you, just grease the right palms, pay the right groups, and you'll get your way. Anybody can do that! I mean, everybody CAN be rich, right? It's only because everyone's lazy that there are a few rich and so many poor.

It's not like one particular group of rich fucks decided that other countries needed to implement draconian copyright laws as part of a trade treaty with the US while ignoring the wishes of the population of that other country, is it? That would be incredibly anti-democratic. In fact, given the warped definition of communism used by many (more accurately referred to as totalitarian), that would be communist action, where the influential can do what they like, and everyone else has to suck it up and make those people richer and more powerful.

Oh dear, it looks like there are two laws, doesn't it? It also looks like the modern US is quite the hypocrite. JUSTICE FOR ALL WHO CAN AFFORD IT, where justice is defined by the number of lobby groups you can hire.

Yeah, definitely nothing to be pointed out by lazy entitled poor people. There's no such thing as a lazy entitled rich person. Why, for something like that you would almost need to be like New Zealand where the rich gave tax cuts to all and then hiked up sales tax to cover it, meaning a net loss for the majority of the population.

Re:Brought to you by:

[dgatwood]

Because you have people like a friend of mine who'll give plenty of lip service about how both parties are screwing us over - yadda yadda yadda, but come election day, she votes Republican - the incumbent - instead of a third party candidate because she can't stand the thought of a Democrat winning. I do point out to her that in Georgia, USA, Democrats have a very hard time getting elected and voting third party isn't "throwing her vote away."

The problem is that in most parts of the country, we don't have even have a real second party to choose, much less an acceptable third. The opposing major party never fields any competent challengers, and the third parties are almost invariably even farther out than that.

I was all set to vote against Feinstein because she completely ignored my letters and those of countless other Silicon Valley folks who expressed our opinions on a number of laws similar to SOPA in past years. I even voted (as a registered independent) in the Republican primary to try to get somebody electable to unseat her.

What happened? The non-independent Republicans in California picked the one candidate on the ticket who I could never even consider electing—Carly Fiorina, a deposed former leader of HP who is so clueless about technology and business that she nearly bankrupted one of the largest tech companies in the Silicon Valley. She is quite possibly the only candidate on the entire Republican ticket who I could confidently say would have even less clue about laws like SOPA than Feinstein.

And this is why nothing ever changes. Instead of being intelligent voters who vote during the primaries for the candidate who is the closest to center, members of both parties choose the candidate that most closely resembles their highly partisan beliefs, thus ensuring that no members of the other party can possibly even consider crossing party lines to vote for their chosen candidate. Combine this with gerrymandering, and you have an electoral system that all but guarantees that no seats ever change hands.

Want to change things? Vote for the most centrist candidate you can choose—the least ideological candidate you can possibly choose—in the hopes that maybe that candidate will be palatable enough to voters in the opposing party to get elected. This is provably the only feasible way to ever actually get anyone sane to "vote for the other guy".

As for voting for a third party, that only makes sense if the third party stands a chance. The right way to handle third parties (in the absence of a more sensible voting scheme) is this: whenever anyone polls you, tell them you are planning to vote for the third-party candidate that is most closely tied with your position. This ensures that the polls track likely real-world election results as closely as possible. Then, on election day, if that candidate is polling strongly, vote for that third-party candidate. Otherwise, vote for whichever major-party candidate is closer.

That said, Feinstein's support for SOPA/PIPA pushed me over the edge. I don't care if Adolph f**king Hitler runs as the Republican, I'm not voting for her again. I'll tolerate even the most batshit crazy Palin/Bachmann wannabe for one term just to get her out. Enough is enough. Feinstein and Boxer have to go.

Not by 2051

[wbr1]

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!

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[swillden]

Are people being jealous of fat useless leach members of "estates"? Let them have their dubious castles and kitschy art collections at the expense of fools who still pay for this old crap.

Nothing of value was lost?

What about all of the old celluloid films which are disintegrating but can't be copied to preserve them because their copyright ownership is cloudy?

The problem isn't people who are actively profiting from old works. The problem is old works that are locked up to the benefit of none and the detriment of all.

The problem is corporate personhood=civil rights

[MountainLogic]

The problem from corporate personhood is unlimited money in elections. The supreme court effectively killed campaign finance reform by declaring corporations as having free speech rights. In legal speak this is known as corporate personhood. There are a couple of very simple changes that can happen at the state level to put a leash on corporate influence in government:

1) Change state corporation law giving for profit limited liability to companies that have full personhood. The argument the supreme court uses for defending corporate personhood is that the constitution supports "the the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” So you allow people the right of free association so long as they do not hide under the shield of limited liability. 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. If I buy shares in MegaEvilChemCorp and one of their factories blows up and kills half a city the worst that can happen to me is that MegaEvilChemCorp could go bankrupt and I'm out what I paid for the stock. 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. The result of this is that no large company would be an unlimited liability company and they would not have personhood rights.

2) Pass meaningful finance reform. $200 limit per person. Open up the books fully of any entity lobbying or campaigning. No PACS, no bundling, no "issue ads," no corporate or union money. (A union and corporate money ban needs to be bound together or it favors one side or the other).

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. There is a movement to create corporations that are allowed to take other consideration into account beyond just short term economic gain such as the environment and their community. See http://www.bcorporation.net/ for more information. Very few companies are likely to do this in the near term, but lets at least allow the experiment for those who are interested in doing the right thing.