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A Mass of Copyrighted Works Will Soon Enter the Public Domain (theatlantic.com)
For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law. From a report: The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019 -- quite literally. Not the concept, but the book by William Carlos Williams. It will be joined by hundreds of thousands of other books, musical scores, and films first published in the United States during 1923. It's the first time since 1998 for a mass shift to the public domain of material protected under copyright. It's also the beginning of a new annual tradition: For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year's Day will unleash a full year's worth of works published 95 years earlier.
This coming January, Charlie Chaplin's film The Pilgrim and Cecil B. DeMille's The 10 Commandments will slip the shackles of ownership, allowing any individual or company to release them freely, mash them up with other work, or sell them with no restriction. This will be true also for some compositions by Bela Bartok, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Pigeons, E.E. Cummings's Tulips and Chimneys, Noel Coward's London Calling! musical, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front, many stories by P.G. Wodehouse, and hosts upon hosts of forgotten works, according to research by the Duke University School of Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Throughout the 20th century, changes in copyright law led to longer periods of protection for works that had been created decades earlier, which altered a pattern of relatively brief copyright protection that dates back to the founding of the nation. This came from two separate impetuses. First, the United States had long stood alone in defining copyright as a fixed period of time instead of using an author's life plus a certain number of years following it, which most of the world had agreed to in 1886. Second, the ever-increasing value of intellectual property could be exploited with a longer term. But extending American copyright law and bringing it into international harmony meant applying "patches" retroactively to work already created and published. And that led, in turn, to lengthy delays in copyright expiring on works that now date back almost a century.
This coming January, Charlie Chaplin's film The Pilgrim and Cecil B. DeMille's The 10 Commandments will slip the shackles of ownership, allowing any individual or company to release them freely, mash them up with other work, or sell them with no restriction. This will be true also for some compositions by Bela Bartok, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Pigeons, E.E. Cummings's Tulips and Chimneys, Noel Coward's London Calling! musical, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front, many stories by P.G. Wodehouse, and hosts upon hosts of forgotten works, according to research by the Duke University School of Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Throughout the 20th century, changes in copyright law led to longer periods of protection for works that had been created decades earlier, which altered a pattern of relatively brief copyright protection that dates back to the founding of the nation. This came from two separate impetuses. First, the United States had long stood alone in defining copyright as a fixed period of time instead of using an author's life plus a certain number of years following it, which most of the world had agreed to in 1886. Second, the ever-increasing value of intellectual property could be exploited with a longer term. But extending American copyright law and bringing it into international harmony meant applying "patches" retroactively to work already created and published. And that led, in turn, to lengthy delays in copyright expiring on works that now date back almost a century.
they still have 6 months to legislate an extension.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Only 0.01% of the population born in 1923 or before are still alive. For 99.99% of the US public in 1923, the copyrights granted were unlimited.
When upholding the 1998 extension in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court did so on grounds that it was harmonizing the copyright term to that of a major market for U.S. works, specifically distinguishing it from the sort of "legislative misbehavior" that commons advocates would refer to as "perpetual copyright on the installment plan." At the time, the European Union had recently extended the term from life plus 50 years to life plus 70 years to reflect the trend to start a family later, as the rationale for life plus 50 in the first place had been the life of those heirs whom the author knew personally.
So to what major market would a third successive extension be billed as harmonizing? No good answer would probably mean the third strike shows "legislative misbehavior."
I wonder if Disney can, yet again, push to protect the Mouse. That has been the key player in all the copyright pushes in the last 40 years. I think they have 5 more years (1928)
>Zero time obviously has no benefit.
Are you sure? Do you truly believe that no art would be produced, nor science or technology developed, without the promise of ongoing economic reward for your work? Most of human history would suggest otherwise. And the benefit of zero protections is that derivative works may be developed immediately without any hindrance by the original creator.
Since the adoption of patents for example, several countries have at various times decided to remove them - and generally enjoyed a technological renaissance until being pressured into re-adopting them. Now - how much of that renaissance was, like Hollywood's early years, due to wholesale copying of other people's work can be debated - but there was obviously value to be had in completely removing the monopolies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.