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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."
So... is the Study of the Public Domain itself in the public domain (through Creative Commons licencing), or is it copyright too?
"She's furniture with a pulse"
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!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
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!
Silence is a state of mime.
James Joyce's works are now freely available to everyone.
An interesting thing I noted is that the Irish and UK copyright terms used to be limited to 50, but were changed to 70 to match the Germans.
I find it a bit ironic that media and publishing companies call copyright violations "theft" after having this put in place. In my opinion they are holding our literary and cultural history hostage.
Barring a sea change in Congress' perception of copyright, we'll get another Mickey Mouse Protection Act by 2051. Remember, the Supreme Court already gave Congress permission to continue extending copyright indefinitely.
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U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
I believe in the benefits of copyrights. Most of my Web pages are copyrighted. However, the current state of intellectual law is unacceptable. Extending copyright coverage to 90 years (Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) violates the concept of "limited Times". The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) stifles innovation instead of promoting it. And the primary beneficiaries of these laws are not "Authors and Inventors" but corporate publishers, movie studios, and record companies who reap the bounty of others' creativity. If you agree that this situation is intolerable, tell your representatives and senators in Congress.
I copied the above paragraph from one of my own copyrighted Web pages (with a slight modification in the second sentence). I hereby grant to the public the right to quote that paragraph at will, in all contexts, and in all media.
Eh, maybe he was working out repressed jealously that no one would ever want to use his work.
It seems to be a greedy boomers thing, it will be interesting to see when all the boomers are gone if their "stuff" will be free. Last time I suggested no one under 50 listens to the Beetles so it doesn't matter anyway, I got mercilessly flamed, so I'll refrain from that form of trolling.
My guess is we'll have a new law for greedy-Xers such that everything post 1970 will remain in "perpetual" copyright but everything older will be free. An interesting area of discussion would be transitional era. I'm thinking Scooby Doo and Black Sabbath Paranoid are going to be soundly copyrighted as X-er fodder, but what about Led Zepplin, or the Bee Gees, I'm thinking those two would become free as boomer fodder.
Then once the last of the X-ers die off, everything up to roughly Jason Beiber will probably become free, etc.
This inspired by a recent XKCD implying that christmas music has been "hostage" to boomer childhood sensibilities for some decades now, and a radio christmas music playlist transition in the near future appears inevitable, assuming broadcast radio survives as an industry long enough for the transition to happen.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2011 was the year super-injunctions were beaten in the UK. Previously, in the UK if you were rich, you could get a super-injunction to stop the media publishing stories about the fact that you cheated on your wife etc. In 2011 that was broken by the fact that 70,000+ people on Twitter decided that they weren't going to abide by it. The law simply can't prosecute 70,000+ semi-anonymous people on the internet.
How about a mass movement to respect the pre-1978 copyright law, but ignore the subsequent changes? Or another line in the sand could be drawn on international lines with the Universal Copyright Convention or the Berne Convention.
Have a lare number of web-sites and/or torrent sites with this material, and only this material.
Established torrent sites aren't the answer, because whilst they do contain some of this material, the also have lots of material that morally should still be copyrighted. Such as last years movies.
Say if you want to keep your copyright after X years pay X fee. That way Mickey Mouse can say out of the PD as long as the fee is payed. But other stuff and abandonware can go free. Also make it pre work or at least some way to stop places buying up lot's of old corporate conglomerates and clamming copyright to lot's of old works with out proof and may it that they have to use / offer the work for sale. The down side of copyrights is dead works and a copyright extension fee / or tax will help fix that.
Getting pleasure from creating stuff yourself is one thing. Getting pleasure from stuff someone else has created is a different thing.
Your suggestion is equivalent to satisfying yourself with masturbation because you can't get sex.
If after say 30-40 years from the date of copyright, the material is no longer available for purchase to the common man (Easy to do via digital distribution for movies/songs/etc atleast), the copyright is declared invalid?
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.
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The fee should have an N^2 or 2^N or N! factor, where N is the number of years since expiration.
+1
The fee doesn't really even need to be large. You could probably achieve the same results with no fee at all, actually, just a periodic re-registration requirement. The key is to ensure that the copyright holder still knows and cares about the work, and that others who are interested in doing something with the work can identify the owner.
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The fee should have an N^2 or 2^N or N! factor, where N is the number of years since expiration.
Meh. That might be satisfying, but it's unlikely to be enacted, and it's not necessary to solve the dead works problem.
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The city Alexandria at the time did reputedly the following.
If you entered the harbour you were asked if you had any scrolls with you. If you had then you were to hand the over so they could copy them for the Great Library.Chances were you'd get back the copy. I don't know if that particular anecdote is true but it is one that makes perfect sense. That's how important knowledge was to them. If you could read it you could access it. Copy it. Teach it. Available knowledge was part of Alexandrias wealth.
When the Great Library burned down it was one of the greatest losses to humanity I can ever imagine.
Now most of us can read it but only as far as the rights as granted by the copyright holders allow.
Not letting things enter Public Domain is a catastrophy that is akin to the fire in the Great Library. How many works have been forgotten due to nobody really knowing who holds the rights or because it isn't profitable to publish it?
Wasn't Return of the King first widely published in the 70ies? At least that's when the great craze started.
We burnt Savonarola, could we please do the same to those clowns who actively steal from our civilisation? I find that particular notion heartwarming.
20 minutes into the future
the extended copyright terms should ONLY have applied to works FIRST registered after 1978 (the date of effect of the bill) and nothing registered prior to that... Imagine the howls of protest if they passed a bill that retroactively extended the sentences of people already convicted of crimes or retroactively extended back a change in tax rate to cover years of income for which you've already paid taxes on? Surely that 1978 bill was unconstitutional in the first place as it was retroactive in effect?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
This would benefit the companies and hurt the individual. Mickey will be in copyright forever, while my fantastic great book I have just written won't be. Then that will be turned into a Disney production, because it is in public domain.
That will then be copyrighted. They have done so with several stories already. The only difference is the fee. The rest would not make any difference.
And you can be damn sure that there will be a group discount and it will be tax deductible and so many other rules that they will pay less for all their copyrights then you will do for just one.
Just make it a max of 10 years. That would mean no need to change anything, except the number of years. If grand-dad dies the day after he wrote his book, I have 10 years to collect on it. If he dies the before, I have 1 day.
Artists can start playing their own music after 10 years f they had problems with their publisher. They can even use their own name again. (Who? Prince! That skinny MF with the high voice.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Say if you want to keep your copyright after X years pay X fee.
While that would be a nice trick to get a lot of today abandoned stuff into the public domain, I really don't like the idea in the long run, as it would mean that all the big cooperations simply let their lawyers handle things and get copyright protection for as long as the law allows, while the stuff of the little guy will slip into public domain against their will.
I think a much better solution to copyright would be staged copyright, i.e. 15 years of copyright as is, after that another 15 years where the work is free-for-non-commecial-use, then full public domain.
We yearn because this is about _OTHERS_ who sold their work to _NOBODY_. A company is not somebody it's a legal entity designed to restrict liability of individuals for harm they may cause and collect and pool capital investments in an efficient manner. Unlike an author who has a death, an obvious point in time around which which his rights and the good of society can be balanced a company can go on indefinitely and has a inherent disregard for any concerns which don't directly affect short or long-term profitability. The idea that a corporation can own intellectual property without an intellect is not beneficial to our advancement as a species. I've got not problem if the author wants to restrict his/her work for as long as he/she lives. But after they are gone a company shouldn't be able to hold something they didn't create and milk profit in perpetuity. We're talking copyright of artistic works today and that's disturbing enough but when the same concepts and legal tactics bleed into more other areas that affect quality of life and advancement it can be even more damaging.
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
Bull. Nothing will ever be allowed to enter the public domain again.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
Choose to not give a fuck about copyright, or use those works that should be in the public domain and don't give a fuck about anyone else's hangups.
Has anyone ever advanced the argument that reducing the time a work is "protected" by IP might actually increase productivity, as creators have to produce new works to make up for works that pass into the public domain?
There are writers alive today who wrote and published in 1955.
Just wondering.
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.
I'd agree
Corporate person hood just lets stockholders stay greedy and relatively insulated from the negative side effects of what their company is doing.
When all you see are dividends, it's hard to care how you get them.
then it's time for an "intellectual 'property' tax." Let them have their eternal copyright, but tax the living shit out of it.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
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.
Well said. I disagree about the term being tied to a person's lifetime, though. I think it should be a fixed number of years and be inheritable.
That really isn't the problem of corporate personhood, it's a problem of personal apathy. How much did you donate during the last election? Probably none.
Look at what happened in Obama's election campaign......he made over half a billion from individual donors. That is not easy for corporations to match. In politics, the reason corporations have so much power is because people complain about money, but they don't care enough to actually donate to the person of their choice. Corporations win because of apathy.
That is the important point: it doesn't matter WHAT kind of campaign finance laws you have, as long as their is widespread apathy, the corporations will still win.
Also, you completely misunderstand corporate personhood. If a person in a corporation behaves negligently, they can still face criminal charges, for example, like in the BP oil spill.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The center laments that works published in 1955 aren't being released. But in fact, the public domain won't expand at all, except through explicit renunciation of copyright.
Here's why.
Works published before 1923 are in the public domain.
Works published between 1923 and 1963, provided that the copyright has been renewed, are copyrighted until 95 years after publication-- 2018 at a minimum.
You might expect that the works of Virginia Woolf, for example, would be freed from copyright,as it has been 70 years since her death in 1941. But her post 1923 works will not enter the public domain until 2019. Provided, of course, that the copyright terms are not further extended in to the far future.
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?
Nothing is stopping anyone from copying an old celluloid film (I'm assuming someone actually holds the old celluloid film in their hands) They just can't turn around and start distributing that copy. Of course if you don't have the film in your hand you can't copy it no matter what the law is
See Eldred. I'm not proposing a theoretical problem.
Copying old movies isn't cheap or easy. Without the ability to redistribute them, even people who are motivated out of pure altruism can't really afford to do it.
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they will change copyright law again so that they don't get into public domain
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
> we will have to wait until 2051 before being able to use these works without restriction
Don't even think it. Every time Mickey Mouse approaches public domainhood, Disney lays more money on Congress and gets an extension, and they will certainly continue to do so, and Congress is certain to continue to do so. Copyrights are effectively permanent. That's what Eldredge was all about.
True, many of the treasures of 20th century culture are locked up behind copyrights, and will remain so for decades to come. But 21st century? Not as much. So many things are already being given away. Linux? No problem, you're already free to use it, share it, and create distributed works from it. Millions of people are doing so, and society benefits enormously. Wikipedia? In a different age, that would have been a company's crown jewels, something to be tightly controlled, but instead it's given away for free (both in terms of money and freedom). Countless software products, books, audio recordings, data collections, and other works are being given away under open licenses, and that trend is likely to keep growing with time. Companies are starting to open source their products because it's the only way they can compete with the existing open products.
If you believe copyright law is messed up and hurts society, the single best thing you can do is create things and give them away under open licenses. The more that is available without unreasonable restrictions, the less valuable the restricted works become.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Extending the copyrights is a whittling away of fair use, a little at a time. When the current copyright expires, they will find a way to extend it in perpetuity. And the rules will be grandfathered in.
Pretty soon the Bible will be copyrighted. King James descendants will be entitled to royalties.
I have certain dislikes against the copyright laws that are prolonged. Corporations can last 100 years and they do not want to lose the milk cows. Should a published work be owned forever? Here is what will happen if you say yes.
You will eventually encounter the disappearance altogether of copyright laws allowing any fair use. Can you imagine libraries will not be allowed to permit borrowing of material, unless you pay a royalty for eacn library loan? Corporate greed makes this all come to pass.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada