For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain

[sl8]

From https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/first-time-20-years-copyrighted-works-enter-public-domain-180971016/#w3oR2yQWIlY1wI1B.99

For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain

A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019

By Glenn Fleishman
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
JANUARY 2019

“Whose woods these are, I think I”—whoa! We can’t quote any more of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” because it is still under copyright as this magazine goes to press. But come January 1, 2019, we, you, and everyone in America will be able to quote it at length on any platform.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.

That deluge of works includes not just “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which appeared first in the New Republic in 1923, but hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs and films. 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. Any artist can create and sell a feminist response to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Dadaist piece, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) and any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments and post it on YouTube.

“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.”

...

More at link.

[MicaelS]

1. 25 years should be the max.

Jan 1 every year should be the day copyright expires for ANYTHING published 25 years before.

[PJMcK]

3. That is a ludicrous suggestion

Without copyright, what incentive is there for creators? The rest of the world recognizes that the right to copy belongs to the originators. Why would you deny Americans the same protections for their property?

Additionally, your suggestion would destroy whole industries: television, films, music, books and more.

In fact, the logic of your idea could be extended to other forms of property including real estate.

[MicaelS]

4. Not ludicrous at all.

If you can't make your money in 25 years, too bad

[spanone]

5. NO, it's ludicrous.

[kcr]

8. So you're against public domain entirely? n/t

[spanone]

9. Nope. I support current public domain law.

[kcr]

11. If you support the current laws, then practically you don't.

Disney killed the public domain with the current, ludicrously long copyright protection.

[spanone]

13. whatever. I work with people who make their living off their copyrights.

you wish to take their livelihood from them.

I won't support that.

[kcr]

16. You wish to put words in people's mouths, evidently

What Disney does throwing their weight around manipulating US Copyright law so theirs never runs out serves NO ONE'S interest.

[jmowreader]

27. Not sure if Disney is considered a juridical person...

...but for everyone else, copyright is for your lifetime plus 70 years.

For animation, I think they should make this rule: copyright on all works featuring a character resets if they produce at least 10 minutes of new animation containing the character every 10 years. Disney’s new Ralph movie would have reset the clock on all the Princess movies. This will serve two purposes: they don’t have to release Snow White or Rabbit of Seville into the public domain, and we get new Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

[frazzled]

12. It's not all about money

It's about artists' rights to the use of their work as well. Does an artist want Donald Trump to abscond with the image of a painting or drawing they made in 1988 to use as a logo for his 2020 campaign? or for some cheap beer to copy it onto their label? It's their right: the image belongs to them. You can't just take it.

Same for composers, authors, filmmakers: you can't just steal their work. A painting, a piece of writing, a film, a song or concerto is not the image of it or the book of it or the DVD of it or the recording or sheet music of it. It's the idea of it, the creative thing itself. Just because you bought a painting for $30 million, you do not (by law) have the right to disseminate its image as you wish. That right is retained by the artist, for a reasonable time during his or her life and the rights of his or her heirs or estate. And not just for money: for the right to the uses to which the work is put.

Artists are workers—laborers in the true sense of the word. Have some respect for workers' rights.

[EffieBlack]

18. Thank you

[MicaelS]

22. Big companies have been manipulating..

Patents / copyrights for decades. Holding up the little guy as a meat shield to protect the big guy is what Repulicans do all the time.

I will settle for 50 years then it goes Public Domain.

And it is NOT theft.

[DBoon]

6. 75 years should be the max

Copyright laws should not be amended everytime Steamboat Willie gets ready to enter public domain.

[Codeine]

10. That's turning a hook into a slice.

The roughly billion-plus years copyright is now running to is absurd to be sure, but 25 years is utterly silly. That means music and books created as recently as the 90s by bands and authors who are still working and relying on that back catalog for income would be shit out of luck.

Terrible idea.

[MicaelS]

21. Fine, make it 50 years, not one day more. n/t

[Codeine]

36. I prefer the life of the artist.

It doesn’t seem reasonable to tell a person that they’ve lost the right to control their own creations simply because an arbitrary number of years have passed.

I mean, I don’t much care for Bob Dylan, but his shit is his shit — he made it. I’ve got no right whatsoever to start issuing my own editions of anything in his catalog that is fifty years old or more. Same with Jagger or McCartney or Jasper Johns; all living artists who deserve to maintain the right to disseminate and profit from their creation as they see fit.

[LakeSuperiorView]

28. Life of the artist(s) plus a reasonably short timespan.

To expire Jan 1st of the following year. No extensions.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. look for Disney to buy another copyright law extension

Getting too close to the mouse again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. Mickey Mouse and the Beatles

That's why public domain releases have been frozen.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, and the Disney corporation has fought long and hard to keep him from falling into the public domain. I don't expect any copyrighted films or characters from 1928 or later will be PD in the US (or probably the world)for a long, long time.

In the EU, recordings from 1962 and earlier are in the public domain. 1962 just happens to be the year the Beatles issued their first single (first album not released until 1963).

Here in Canada, musical compositions fall into the public domain 50 years after the composer's death. For example, Woody Guthrie's songs became PD this year, Jimi Hendrix's songs will be PD in 2021.

[Adrahil]

15. I think there is a reasonable way to protect IP's currently actively being used.....

... to produce new content without extending the protections to "passive" properties.

Also, something like Mickey Mouse could be protected under trademark.

I think it's reasonable for Disney to want to protect the Mouse.... that symbol IS after all, an active part of their branding and content.

But inactive/passive stuff? Nah.

[kcr]

19. This is correct. I think some imagine early retirements

sipping cocktails on lush patios while living off fat residual checks rolling in till the day they die. That is only a reality for a minority. While it's obviously necessary to financially protect intellectual property, there is no reason why works by people long dead need to be copyright protected. 50 years was more than enough time. It was pure greed on Disney's part.

[Adrahil]

26. WEll, to be fair...

Corporations are about making money. That's what they are for. I'm not, in general, against them advancing their interests. It is the job of the government to make sure the interests of the people are protected.


FWIW, Disney has continued to allow Lucasfilm's fairly generous approach to Sta Wars fan-created content and even merchandise. That's in strong contrast to CBS/Paramount approach, which is very oppressive.

So they are not COMPLETELY evil money-grubbers

[smb]

35. The System Should Be Medium-Length Terms With A Limited Number Of Renewals

Something like "25 years, two options to renew for another 25 years for a total of up to 75 years" would allow reasonably long-term protection to works that were still valuable and remove the cloud of uncertainty from older obscure works (like early 20th century films whose copyright status is unclear, complicating attempts to transfer them to modern media and attempt to rekindle interest) by making it easier to tell for certain which ones are still in copyright (since anything still in copyright would have documentation not more than 25 years old).

[TheBlackAdder]

37. Ironically, almost all of Disney's ideas were taken from public domain stories and tales.

[jalan48]

14. The 5th volume of the Pendergast translation of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" comes out at the

beginning of January 2019. It was originally released in 1923. We can thank Sonny Bono for the extra 20 year wait.

[Codeine]

17. At the rate I'm getting through Proust

another extension won’t impact me.

[jalan48]

20. I know what you mean. Very slow going. One critic lamented about the pace of the book.

Apparently the 45 pages needed to describe Proust getting out of bed in the morning was deemed excessive.

[FSogol]

23. Woot! Proust. "When from a long distant past nothing persists, after the people are dead, after...

things are broken and scattered, still alone, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unfaltering in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence the vast structure of recollection."

-"Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust

[jalan48]

24. Woo Hoo! Involuntary memory as a key to the past. Slow going but worth it.

[FSogol]

25. Agree. If people find it too hard to read and digest, try listening to it in audio book form.

It is truly fascinating.

PS, I give the same advice to people who struggle with James Joyce's "Ulysses".

[jalan48]

30. I tried Ulysses and couldn't make it through. I'll give it another shot. I have to admit there were

stretches in Proust where I checked out but still read the words. That's why i was looking forward to the newer translation. I hoped it would be more readable that the 1920's translation.

[wryter2000]

32. That's as much Proust as I'll ever need to read

Seriously, the stuff some people think of as good prose.

[Hekate]

29. Woo-hoo! Gutenberg.org here I come for fresh goodies!

[wryter2000]

31. Cecil B. DeMille doesn't own the Old Testament

Anyone can redo the Ten Commandments.

[FSogol]

33. Remake? C'mon, it can't get better than John Wayne, as a Roman Centurion muttering, "Truly, dis man

wuz da son of gawd."

[wryter2000]

34. LOL