conuly | New works entering the public domain again this year.

From:

alexseanchai

ain't that the truth

From:

mordorbot

Public domain, or "however many years its been since Walt Disney's death"

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Copyright was originated to deal with the printing version of movie piracy. Literally authors needed a way to prosecute bootleg copies of their work competing with a run still being set. Frequently on worse paper and typo ridden. Or those damn bot fed teeshirt plagiarists.

From:

hudebnik

There was also a phenomenon of people writing their own material and publishing it under the name of a well-known writer so they could sell more copies, IIRC. Which in modern terminology would probably be a violation of trademark rather than copyright.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

False pretenses. Trademark (I'm not a legal scholar) and names really only applies to actors but that was so tied up in the studio system and again, it's that false pretenses. Purporting to be an actor better know is a form of fraud or sharp practice.

Appending a name not their own to a musical score has happened.

From:

conuly

A tradition that goes back as far as the New Testament and probably further.

From:

thewayne

Stupid effing mouse!

From:

topaz_eyes

I think Sonny Bono is on record somewhere saying he wanted copyright to be in perpetuity. Since we have him to thank for the last extension. Copyright should be no more than 25 years after date of creation. With no renewal option. It was never meant to be 3 generations.

From:

calimac

No, 25 years is way too short. Copyright was originally extended in the US after people saw Irving Berlin outlive his own copyrights. For often-elderly authors to be unable to profit from their own work is unfair. Life + 25 seems reasonable to me, to let the immediate heirs get a run out of popular work. Then the public domain can get a crack at it.

From:

conuly

How about 25 years, with the option to renew - but renewal costs more every time, and heirs after death only get to renew ONCE.

From:

calimac

That's pretty much what we used to have in the US - two terms (of originally 14, later 28 years), with renewal being an opt-in option; that is, you needed to apply for it. Even 28 + 28 turned out to be too short, in terms of authors outliving their copyrights, and the opt-in renewal was a bone nuisance. For works in the second period, it was an exasperating nuisance to look up and see if they'd been renewed or not, especially in those paperwork days.

From:

conuly

Now everything's online. A proper database could sort that all out.

From:

calimac

You include the word "proper."

From:

conuly

I see what you're getting at, but I don't think we have to just throw up our hands here and say "same for everybody because I don't think anybody wants to catalog this shit".

From:

calimac

In basic, I'm just saying that it'd still be difficult to track renewal status down. Just not as difficult.

But regarding the "same for everybody" point, why not? Why should copyright status depend on whether the holder bothered to make a renewal? The correlation of this with "nobody still cares enough about the work to renew it" would be only very roughly approximate.

From:

topaz_eyes

I get why people thought it was unfair that Irving Berlin outlived his own copyrights. But copyright law is also supposed to balance the rights of the creator with the rights of the public. Granting the exclusive right to profit, long enough to support creators while they work on subsequent projects, absolutely is fair and necessary. Beyond that, though? The copyright law in force during Berlin's career provided exclusive rights to profit for up to 56 years. Two generations is imho more than enough time to benefit exclusively, even if the creator is still alive when the copyright runs out. The current Life + 70 is simply excessive. That's what, 5-6 generations? No. That's not earned compensation anymore.

Even Life + 25 seems too long. That could mean a work isn't available to the public domain for up to 4 generations.

From:

calimac

I agree that life + 70 is too long, but "generations" as you're using it is a misleading measure when "life" is the standard. "Life" means that the first generation, the creator of the work, is still alive, so in that sense no generations have passed.

From:

topaz_eyes

Okay, gotcha. This is what I get for trying to answer so late. I still think copyright law should revert to a fixed term from the creation date. Twenty-five years is imho more than enough time to hold the exclusive right to profit from one creation. Maybe thirty at the very outside.

From:

calimac

You can hold that opinion, but I revert to the Irving Berlin case. General opinion at the time was that it was revolting and wrong that he should outlive his own right to profit from his own work, and that's a major reason copyright law was adjusted.

I would also say that, considering the ravenousness with which creative material is nowadays attacked by people who want to appropriate it for their own use, often in rank violation of copyright, that the creators ought to have at least the figleaf of copyright to protect them from that degradation during their own lifetimes.

From:

topaz_eyes

I would also say that, considering the ravenousness with which creative material is nowadays attacked by people who want to appropriate it for their own use, often in rank violation of copyright, that the creators ought to have at least the figleaf of copyright to protect them from that degradation during their own lifetimes.

Noted! Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Holly Black would be proud.

From:

calimac

In reply to the next comment:

I don't know so much about the other cases, but I have particular sympathy towards Diana Gabaldon, who received a torrent of abuse she didn't deserve.

From:

wpadmirer

Wow. As a writer I really disagree. Copywrite should last long enough for both the author and her heirs to be able to earn from it, and to be paid if it goes into another form - such as a movie.

75 years - these days - is sometimes not as long as the writer lives. Depends on when they started publishing! I have a dear writer friend who is 97! His first works were written when he was in college. For him to lose the rights to his work now is a terrible thing, since he's still here to watch someone else use his work without his permission.

From:

conuly

He's the exception. Meanwhile, nearly all work produced 75 years ago is not commercially viable and is being lost, actually lost, because people have no access to it.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

That's the publishing system records being broken. Music has that too, except there, the record company often retains the rights which book publishers lose them if it goes out of print long enough.

There was a long period when Sherlock Holmes was mostly in the public domain (excepting The Last Bow) and pastiche writers would defer to ACD's daughter.

The real problem with copyright being so long, is textbooks don't add things while they are still remembered.

From:

all_strange_wonders

It's actually the life of the author + 70 years for works created after 1978. It's a bit more complicated for works originally copyrighted before that time, but suffice it to say that your friend and his heirs will continue to hold copyright on any currently copyrighted material for some time, especially since copyright renewal has been automatic since 1992.

In fact, if you check out the (obviously deeply incomplete) wikipedia article on works entering the public domain in 2020, you'll see that works entering the public domain this year are by authors who died around the time your friend probably started publishing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_public_domain.

From:

silveradept

That would be nice, but the House of Mouse would have to let go of Mickey for that to happen, and that's not very likely.

From:

conuly

I don't think they can sneak another extension through now that people know and care about what we've lost. They're gonna lose Mickey sooner or later, and Marvel's gonna lose Batman.