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2018 Is the Last Year of America's Public Domain Drought (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Happy Public Domain Day, every-some of you! In New Zealand and Canada, published works by artists who died in 1967 -- Rene Magritte, Dorothy Parker, John Coltrane, and many others -- have entered the public domain; Kiwis and Canadians can now freely distribute, perform, and remix a wealth of painting, writing, and music. In Europe, work published by artists who died in 1947 are now public domain. In the United States, well, we get nothing for the 20th year in a row, with one more to go. Our public domain drought is nearly old enough to drink. American copyrights now stretch for 95 years. Since 1998, we've been frozen with a public domain that only applies to works from before 1923 (and government works). Jennifer Jenkins is a clinical professor of law at Duke Law School, which hosts the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. In an email she explained what changed and why nothing has entered American public domain for two decades. "Until 1978, the maximum copyright term was 56 years from the date of publication -- an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years," she wrote. "In 1998, Congress added 20 years to the copyright term, extending it to the author's lifetime plus 70 years, or 95 years after publication for corporate 'works made for hire.'"
There be starz here! TRUMP makes me hot!
And suddenly, legislation will appear that will extend the Public Domain timeout period by another 20 or 50 years.
Watch and see if this doesn't happen before the end of the year.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Solution is here... stop acting like are tards.
#freedumbs
#UScorptocracy
If I build a house, I can will it to my ancestors, it will remain ours in perpetuity unless sold at some point.
If, on the other hand, I write a tune or a book, or develop a drug, or create a painting — well, then I will only be rewarded for a brief period. Or so the article's author would like things to be.
Bullshit. You get everything — just not for free. You can buy royalty-free stock photography and music — rewarding the creators for those of the creations you like. This is a much better system than the proposed collective ownership of art because the flip side of the wonderful free availability is the artists either starving or needing tax subsidies.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We, the American public, have been had. Copyright should be 20 years maximum, renewable once for a period of 10 years against a hefty fee. NO LONGER, PERIOD. Music, books, films, television programs, etc... no exceptions. If it is or ever was broadcast publicly (radio, OTA TV, cable, satellite, internet streaming) there should be liberal fair use for anyone who could have theoretically received the public broadcast (including having it in your flat rate monthly subscription). I.E., record and time shift whenever, however you want so long as you don't rebroadcast to content.
Signed,
Old and Grumpy
Why did Weinstein receive the highest industry honours in both the UK and France, when his taste for rape was an open secret? Why did Polanski receive complete assistance from the British to continue making major movies AFTER he was convicted of drugging and anally raping a little girl, and after he had ran from his (tiny) prison sentence to safety in child-rape friendly France? Why is France child-rape friendly to this day?
Why did Steven Spielberg groom Polanski to make a 'holocaust' movie, and why did the Oscar commitee award rapist Polanski with a major Oscar for that movie?
Why are all the so-called left-wing media outlets that bash Trump daily silent on Trump's illegal move to declare Jerusalem the capital of the jewish terrorist state?
The jews that control entertainment media wanted the copyright periods massively extended, whereas the voters did not. Guess who won. Here's a clue- the leaders of the West, who profess a 'hatred of racism' all say that since jews are the 'master race', jews must be allowed nukes and other WMD, but Iran must be destroyed if Iranians seek nukes.
It is an indisputable FACT that the left, while paying lip service to equality, 100% support zionists and wahhabis- two anti-Human cults that delight in being above the laws of man. Effectively killing the point of public domain is just a tiny fallout from this.
Who is the "author" of a Hollywood film?
Copyright should be a flat 60 years for a creative work, with trademark protection for characters in continuous use such as Mickey Mouse. That means we'd be in the midst of a PD rollout of Buddy Holly and Elvis right now, with Big Band jazz already behind us. Everyone'd have to wait a few more years to get the Beatles w/o paying. That seems about right.
Totally random OT post, but the Public Domain Drought could easily move to any of 172 other countries in the world and start drinking legally now.
The contemporaries of the US with a drinking age of 21 are: Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Kiribati, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nauru, Oman, Palau, Samoa and Sri Lanka.
And the only countries that technically forbid drinking alcohol are: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen
Taken from https://drinkingage.procon.org...
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Don't worry, this congress and president will ensure nothing new falls to the public domain this or any other year.
I agree.
Good, this will help spread Canada and New Zealand's culture freely around the world.
A bumper crop of metaphors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Two things are missing from the original story (which did not allow comments). One is that the original original copyright law (designed by the Founders) provided copyright protection for 14 years, with a possible extension of 14 more. Their intent was to place copyrighted material in the public domain fairly quickly, after allowing the creator to profit. The Founders would be disgusted by the bloated copyrght law of today. The second issue is how todayâ(TM)s copyright law became so bloated - which is Mickey Mouse. It is not a coincidence that today any IP created after the mid-1920s is protected by copyright, and that Mickey Mouse was created in the mid-1920s. The Disney corporation (copyright fiends) has twice bought Congressmen (including Sonny Bono) and arranged to have copyright extended just before Mickey was to go into publc domain. Today US copyright law exists not for the benefit of the public, but to protect the profits of Disney. Iâ(TM)m surprised the author ignored this...
What in the hell is that?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Like taxes, the very concept of "public domain" is simple theft. A transfer of wealth at the point of a gun from job creators to lazy welfare queens who refuse to work and expect everything to be handed to them by goverment. Tell me again why I should give two simple fucks that takers aren't being catered to in this country or why we should copy the shitty ideas from shit countries like Canada or old europe?
I expect the last copy-right holder of those works to actually make those works available. So if it was a movie or recording the recording must be published in a currently supported format. If it is a book a digital scan or other copy of the work. We, the people of Canada, granted the copy-right holder a limited monopoly on profiting on that work and now we want it available to all Canadians.
We should be able to sue any copy right holder of any significant cultural work that becomes lost. As a geek, I do think things like the lost early Dr. Who episodes are a loss to our society and the BBC, because they didn't make the works available sooner, should be held financially responsible. I guess we just need to figure out who is allowed to sue on behalf of us.
The only reason that house you built is considered your "property" is because you (and the government) use *force* to keep me from moving in and using it for myself. That makes it theft. You are a thief.
We'll be sure to get that handled before the year's up.
Yours forever,
Disney
For those who don't get the Disney reference, the implication is that the 1998 Copyright Extension Act (sponsored by Hollywood-owned Congressman Sono Bono), was really the brainchild of Disney, as part of an ongoing effort to keep their earliest cartoon and cartoon characters (most notably Mickey Mouse) from ever entering the public domain. Disney was also suspected by many to be behind the Copyright Act of 1976, which had extended the term previously. Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, was created in 1928 and, with each of these new laws, always stays just outside of ever entering into public domain.
Here is an interesting article on the subject.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The tax plan was not Trump's, it was the Republican Congress's.
I think that there would be far more public awareness of a new copyright extension, and a lot of determined resistance. People weren't using the Internet to organize in 1998, at least not to the degree that we've seen with e.g. the Net Neutrality campaigns. The 1998 extension was unpopular, but I don't recall it ever being front-page news. I suspect that public pressure, probably as coordinated by our benevolent billion-dollar tech overl^Wcompanies, would be sufficient to convince Democrats to see the issue as an opportunity to slam Republicans rather than an opportunity to appease their big-media donors.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
tl;dr Ideas are not property, and the idea that you own something you don't have immediate physical control over is also a social agreement. Copyright exists as a social convenience, and humanity got along fine without it for thousands of years. The Internet being effectively copyright-free has revived older means of supporting artists, namely patronage and serially released works.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Personally, I blame a large rat.
Have gnu, will travel.
American copyrights now stretch for 95 years.
Wait, I thought it was life of author + 70 years, or 120 years after creation/95 years after publication for work-for-hire works, which means, that the copyright duration could actually be much longer than 95 years.
For example, strictly hypothetical, if some teen at 15 makes a spectacular song, and then lived to be 100, that would mean that the non-work-for-hire work would be under copyright for 85 + 70, or 155 years.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Exponential Copyright Renewal Fees needed for every 10 years after the initial 20 yrs.
My thoughts:
Authors get 20 yrs for free. They cannot give up their copyright.
On year 21, the work becomes public domain and available for reuse, fair-use by anyone unless the original author pays 50% of the profits made on the work up to that time as a fee to renew it.
Assuming they pay 10 yr the fee, on year 31, the next fee is 100x the prior fee.
Assuming they pay the 10 yr fee, on year 41, the next fee is 100x the prior fee.
I'm willing for 1 character/yr to be given a 100 year no-fee copyright for things considered to be core to American culture, as set by law in following the normal law-making methods. Micky Mouse comes to mind. Luke Skywalker also comes to mind. But other characters in those cultural icons would not be protected.
Trade marks for characters should be illegal too.
What we have today has gone too far. All those B+ movies, TV, and books certainly don't deserve more than 20 yrs of protection.
Limited time exclusive use, not forever, like Disney is doing and all the other big name video makers are following.
Locked down and dying.
And suddenly, legislation will appear that will extend the Public Domain timeout period by another 20 or 50 years.
Watch and see if this doesn't happen before the end of the year.
There's a way to both extend copyright on some works and still let most things enter the public domain. If these copyrights are so valuable, why on earth is the US government extending them for free? That's insane. Here's a system that would let the very few people willing to extend their copyrights do so and yet make money for the government and let most stuff enter the public domain.
1) Current copyright law (so-called Bono Act) is retained.
2) Copyrights are not automatically extended beyond the Bono act terms. Owners must apply for an extension before the expiration. If they miss the application for any reason at all - too bad, so sad. The work goes into the public domain. This will eliminate the 2nd biggest problem with the Bono Act (the biggest problem is doing renewals for free) - not making people be responsible for their copyrights when a very small number of major failures (ie. It's A Wonderful Life) led to much crying and wailing by Hollywood.
3) Those who apply for an extension get one for 10 years. We could make it 5 if you like. The cost - $1 million per work. If you don't apply and pay the money, it goes into the public domain.
4) Every subsequent renewal costs 10 times what the previous one did. The 2nd renewal will cost $10 million. The 3rd will cost $100 million. The 4th will cost $1 billion. And so on. At some point even Disney will have to say "Enough is enough" on extending copyrights on things from the 1920s.
If you write a creative work, you can keep it forever, just like the house you built. You can pass it forward, and nothing will stop you from doing that. You have the right to sell your house, and then you lose ownership of it. You can also sell your work and lose ownership of it.
However, with a creative work you get an extra right, and that right is to control the copying of it. As long as you own the copyright, you are the only one who can make copies, or give the right to make them, and this allows you to make money by making them.
If you own a house, someone else can build an identical house, and it will be theirs. If you own a creative work, nobody else is allowed to create the same work. (It's also possible to patent the design of objects, and that's another intellectual right that's somewhat similar to copyright, but again, it's an expansion of ownership rights.)
As you can hopefully understand now, this right gives the owner of a work a lot of power that isn't inherent in owning an object. You can only sell an object you make once, transferring the ownership, but you can sell a creative work as long as you keep the copyright, and nobody else is allowed to do that.
Which is why this is supposed to be a limited right. Copyright is meant to encourage creators to create, by allowing them to make money off a work. When copyright is limited, it encourages the creator to continue creating, instead of living off old hits from tens of years ago. There is no natural right to continually make money off a work, and certainly no right for descendants to make money off it. That totally goes against the intention. If someone makes money off the work of their ancestors, that in no way encourages further creation.
Besides government works and works whose copyrights are challenged in court ("Happy Birthday to You" etc.), works not "for hire" published after 1923 and whose only author died 70 years ago have entered into the public domain when the 70th anniversary arrives, if they weren't already in the public domain.
In almost all cases, they would have already entered due to non-renewal or other reasons.
It's not much, I know. I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head.
This is important though in that it removes any UNCERTAINTY about a work's copyright status. For example, if a book was published in 1924-1947 and the author died in 1947 and there isn't some reason the (c) last longer than "70 years after the death of the author," we know it's now in the public domain. A week ago, unless we did a diligent search for renewals, we did not know.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm not the parent, but am Canadian and a geek.
The point is you're granted a legal monopoly on your works for 20 years to make money and license it as you see fit.
20 years is plenty of time to profit on a work. If you feel you deserve more time, I'm willing to negotiate, but the parent's point stands: art is culture, and keeping it from the public indefinitely is a hazard to society and culture.
Billions made from employees who are fired simply because they grow too old and haven't created anything else that was big enough. When 1 billion dollar idea should be all one should need to live off their whole life and benefit their employer.
captcha: overuse
Probably every copyright in perpetuity is going to be held forever by a few entities. Will it matter if you created a work? No...
Itâ(TM) Just be *ahem* acquired by some US entity and the copyright will extend forever.
The major problem (IMO) isn't the incentive issue, but that works get lost to the public. A good example for this is old computer games. The companies, which held the copyright, have often closed, and the copyrights have reverted to the individual creators, which means that there's not just one person controlling them, and these people are not only hard to track down, but often have little interest in making the games available. In other cases it's not clear who owns the copyright, after mergers and acquisitions.
The end result is that games get lost to the public. Even when companies try to buy the rights in order to make the games available again, they often fail. Some games are made available as abandonware, but that's not legal, because they're still protected by copyright. So in effect the only way to make these games available is to go against the law.
Existing works should've continued to be subject to their original copyright term. The new copyright duration should've only applied to new works - things created after the copyright extension act was passed. Kinda the inverse of grandfathering and ex post facto laws. This prevents an immediate beneficiary of the change to the law from unduly influencing the process of changing the law. Everyone takes a step back and considers the entire ramifications of the change to the law, instead of considering only the tiny immediate effect of the change.
The rationale for this is that the whole point of copyright is to encourage the creation of artistic works. Since the pre-existing work has already been made, copyright has already has served its function and encouraged its creation. So there is nothing to be gained by extending the duration of pre-existing copyrighted works. You can't encourage a pre-existing work to be created over again.
What most people don't know is, Sonny Bono actually had some sort of music career before he became a corrupt politician. Did you know that? I knew that. Most people don't know that. Because everyone just knows him as the guy who came up with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. But he was actually a singer. He died skiing when he hit a tree; once the tree has seventy more rings I'll check out his albums.
and software copyrights 5-10 years base with renews. To fix abandonware issues. and right to repair issues to fix issues with suing web sites that hold roms / manuals / restore disks form people trying to fix there owned hardware.
there are people with rare games that don't dump them and pull that copyright BS when asked even when the The companies that made them have closed or have sold off IP and when thought a lot of mergers that is very hard to fine what companies owns it now. Also there some IP trolls that hold the rights and change big bucks for rom files and manuals.
When the UK last extended our copyright duration for music - from fifty years, up to seventy - the change was not made entirely retroactive. Like the US it imposed a 'freeze' on new works entering the public domain, but unlike the US it did not re-copyright works which had already expired. This situation only refers to what the law calls 'sound recordings,' so it's quite possible for a specific recording of a song to now be public domain but the music and lyrics both still under copyright.
Thus, the Open Music Archive has been compiling all the pre-1963 music they can get their hands on and hosting it in the UK.
http://www.openmusicarchive.or...
There's also a UK-hosted music archive to be found on IPFS, under key QmPEiNptxQ6LepGWSnfseLsYxDDBhXc6hiGqYP6a7sSpuH.
I've often thought that a decent compromise might be that copyrights can be fairly long for any commercial use (possibly forever?) but fairly short for non-profit use.
So if you want to sell copies of an old movie, that would be covered by copyright. But if you want to give a copy to a friend, that would not.
K e y
M o u s E
This is why every product that comes out should have a Public Domain Clause. If you want it to enter the public domain earlier that "law" would normally do it on it's own, then you can force it. Law is not with standing, courts are not with standing, contracts and corporations are not with standing.
This message formerly enters the Public Domain immediately.
star trek TOS is now publiic domain in canada
2018 Is the Last Year of America's Public Domain Drought until Disney extends it another 20 years.
I was not attempting to imply that the public got a fair deal, only refuting a claim that "the public got nothing". Consideration, an analogous concept in contract law, doesn't require that the exchange of value be proportionate.
If the people valued the public domain, the people would choose to purchase products and services from organizations that promote the public domain. But because they instead have chosen to view works of authorship published by copyright maximalists, the people on the whole have voted with their dollars for copyright maximalism.
The perusal of copyrighted works could monitored by a tax-funded, neutral organization and
copyright holders paid fees through a money-stream from Federal taxes.
There would need to be a non-intrusive means of monitoring use of each work, to determine
how much to pay for it, of course.
An algorithm would be needed to assess the value of each work to the public to determine how
much each copyright holder would be paid for each use.
An effective design of such a system might be difficult, but it would be worth it to have
freely accessible IP for everyone.
Copyright holders would be freed of the overhead and hassle of managing sales.
An over-all win-win, I think.
We'll just route the money back to Disney in the form of tax breaks and incentives. It's why tobacco taxes haven't eliminated smoking. We subsidize tobacco growers. Same deal will happen here.
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This is why calls for "reasonable, moderate reform" of copyright monopoly - usually published by the semi-official propaganda organs - no longer carry any weight.
The culture monopolists too long have shamelessly abused their privilege. It is now obvious to most people of normal intelligence that copyright monopoly is immoral and harmful to society. It must be abolished.
What it needs to be is a percentage of the person or corporation's income which is making at least 200 thousand dollars. Anyone whose gross income is less than that can retain copyright on their works indefinitely (since not enough people care about them to pay for them.) While anyone making more than that amount would have to pay x percent of their income towards renewal fees/taxes. This number/percentage could be adjusted based on the average quantity of works an individual author/corporation produces over a certain period of time. There would be secondary changes needed to avoid making this another loophole situation, like a way to deter corporations from simply creating a subsidiary or an 'independent' but financially indebted corporation per work in order to ensure every work stayed copyrighted, but this system would better allow individual authors to retain copyrights outside of 'raging successes' while ensuring that authors who became raging successes either had to pay money back to society in exchange for not releasing their works back into the public commons, or release them when a selection of their other works are considered far more profitable to retain.
It is sort of the copyright equivalent of that one European country's traffic ticket laws, where your ticket cost is based on a percentage of your income for the year, so while it doesn't necessarily hurt the poor and rich equally, it will quickly add up if the wealthy are doing it all the time.