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All Copyrighted Works First Published In the US In 1923 Will Enter Public Domain On January 1st (smithsonianmag.com)
"At midnight on New Year's Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain," reports Smithsonian Magazine. "It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.
"After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit 'Yes! We Have No Bananas,' any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt's stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill's The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations." From the report: "The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we're reaching the 20-year thaw," says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one -- in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond -- predated Google. "We have shortchanged a generation," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. "The 20th century is largely missing from the internet."
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author's works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years. Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse's first appearance on screen, in 1928, was set to enter the public domain in 2004. At the urging of Disney and others, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named for the late singer, songwriter and California representative, adding 20 years to the copyright term. Mickey would be protected until 2024 -- and no copyrighted work would enter the public domain again until 2019, creating a bizarre 20-year hiatus between the release of works from 1922 and those from 1923.
"After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit 'Yes! We Have No Bananas,' any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt's stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill's The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations." From the report: "The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we're reaching the 20-year thaw," says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one -- in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond -- predated Google. "We have shortchanged a generation," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. "The 20th century is largely missing from the internet."
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author's works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years. Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse's first appearance on screen, in 1928, was set to enter the public domain in 2004. At the urging of Disney and others, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named for the late singer, songwriter and California representative, adding 20 years to the copyright term. Mickey would be protected until 2024 -- and no copyrighted work would enter the public domain again until 2019, creating a bizarre 20-year hiatus between the release of works from 1922 and those from 1923.
The current take on Copyright, globally and especially in US is ridiculous. The origin of Copyright is to protect original typesetters from the fact that was much easier to copy an already typeset and printed work than to do an original typeset based on a handwritten manuscript. The purpose was to ensure that books got printed. Obviously, this no longer applies. In order to maximize public good, copyright may still have a place, but then we need to ask the question: "What time horizon of revenue is necessary to make an artist find it worthwhile to create a new work of art?" The answer is of course not lifetime + 95 years or something similarly stupid. In the day of immediate global distribution, no cost for duplication and very fast changes in what's popular, the argument can be made for 1 year, 5 years or possibly 10 years. Anything longer than that is not for maximizing public good, but for enriching publishing houses. It is not a self evident right that you and all your descendants for a hundred years can live of a revenue stream from some work you did a very long time ago. It's time for a change.
Yes, that's even more ridiculous. If you want to know just HOW ridiculous, realize that no Beatles song will enter PD before 2068, 100 years after pretty much all of them were written, and even that only if McCartney and Starr bite the dust in the next couple days.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Drug companies spend hundreds of millions to develop a single new drug, and get it approved for sale. Yet they only get 20 years to sell it before any schmuck with a FDA certified production facility can take the patent info an make their own version that gets sold for $4 a month at Walmart. Why should your book get more protection than life-saving medications? The same is true for all sorts of inventions that have heavy R&D cost. Books, on the other hand can written on even the cheapest computers available for sale, and are something that usually only takes one person to write.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
I have no problem with Disney's most popular characters NOT going into public domain. Disney actively exploits its brand. Good for them. They've kept Mickey Mouse alive for 90 years. They're not patent trolls sitting on copyrighted or patented stuff with the only objective of suing everyone who uses their brand or patent.
How does the world benefit from Mickey Mouse going into public domain? In no way. The world doesn't become a better place. If anything, all that happens is that Disney loses licensing money. Yes, disney IS an evil corporation, but this isn't the point here.
On the other hand, "abandonware", such as older games, SHOULD go into public domain because no one is exploiting them. If no one cares about them, why not release them? That's a good example of stuff going into public domain.
If the person or company who owns the copyright uses it, gives work to other people, and isn't being a dick about suing everyone for patent troll reasons, why take it away from them?
While a 5 year copyright term would cover this for a lot of works, I'm guess people such as stock photograph producers and composers of background and incidental music probably rely on a couple of decades of re-use before they see a reasonable return, and those are the people we should probably be protecting.
Hardly anybody is making money from works created 75 years ago, or even the 56 years of the 1909 act. Even those that were created more than 28 years ago have made more than their original cost back if they're still in print. Most works from before 1990 are not still in print. Rather than encourage publication, copyright makes it near impossible to obtain anything created between 1923 and 1990 without the effort to either find a used copy, or go through the considerable expense of tracking down the copyright holder, and negotiating for a copy.
you can look at my apartment building, and then build your own version with your own money. You're saying that I should get a cut of the rent from *your* apartment building because you copied mine?
sag
The problem is who defines what's abandoned?
Simple, just charge the copyright owner some amount of money every year (after a reasonable initial period; the original period of 28 years seems to be pretty well received) to keep the work protected. Once they stop paying, the work becomes public domain.