This is huge, especially because of the 20-year freeze that just thawed.
On Jan. 1, 2019, all books, movies, and music published in 1923 entered the public domain. It was the first time since the 1990s that anything new entered the public domain, because Congress had extended the length of copyright protection.
If, as the article says, about 80 percent of books published between 1923 and 1964 are also in the public domain, then it's as if 40 years of creative works just came crashing through like a tidal wave to wipe out that 20-year draught!
And perhaps even more important than free access to the works themselves is the ability to adapt and transform these works without restriction. Think about all of the characters from those books that can now become the stars of new stories!
One thing worth pointing out, however, is that the 80 percent of books that did not have their copyright terms renewed are likely to be books that were not commercially successful, so their authors or designees had no strong financial interest in keeping the copyright protected. So don't expect to find many of the most famous works published during this period in the list. Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if there are some true gems that, for whatever reason, did not have their copyright terms renewed, and I'm excited to try to find them!
>> It was the first time since the 1990s that anything new entered the public domain
First time that american books entered the american public domain. Other countries use different copyright lengths. Some american books entered public domain in those countries, even while they remain locked down in their home country (ie Gone with the Wind).
And if one really wants to pick nits, there is actually a very steady flow of non-book things. Anything not subject to copyright/patent/trademark goes strait to public domain. A good example would be the constant stream of space-related stuff from nasa.
Those books would have been in the public domain even before 2000.
One of the good things about the 1976 copyright reform is that the copyright was simplified so that figuring out the copyright status merely requires you to know the death date of the author instead of trying to track down if various procedures were formally followed (I'd have preferred that it be a fixed term to make it even simpler, but it's still a simplification). To give you an idea of how complicated the older status can be, the copyright flowcharts that you see are basically a manifestation of "was this work copyrighted as of the copyright act taking effect?" (e.g., https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain). Eventually, when the copyright clock ticks down on the intermediate period (and assuming no other copyright acts get passed to retroactively lengthen those periods), the determination will boil down to "death of author plus 70 years, or 95 years from publishing, or 120 years from creation."
"merely requires you to know the death date of the author"
That's a pretty big merely!
I can't tell you whether some obscure book is PD just by looking at the book. At worst you're basically working out when and if someone died just based on their name. Quick is Joe Blogs alive or dead?
Then there's the question of who the author is. I believe theres been a court case over Anne Franks diaries and whether her father was an author.
As I said, I'm not a fan of the "life plus N years" copyright term, but that's what the world has settled on (see Berne copyright convention--note that the life+50 is present at least as early as 1908, maybe as far back as 1886).
In the US, the law essentially requires that copyright owners need to explicitly inform the Copyright Office of the author's death date, or at least of evidence that the author was alive at a given point of time. Without that evidence, there is a complete defense that the 95/120 term is in effect. (See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302).
Even commercially successful books often didn't get copyright renewed. Remember they were 25 years old at the time the renewal was needed - all but the most successful were out of print and nobody really expected them to get into print again. Even if they were in print, few were popular enough that anybody would actually make a copy what with the effort required to typeset things in those pre-computer days. (when typeset meant a Linotype machine)
It is sad that Copyright, working closer to how it was originally intended, gets spun as 'a quirk'. Copyright is supposed to expire after a period of time rather than exist in perpetuity for the sole benefit of Copyright holders.
One can debate the moral and philosophical issues of property rights until the cows come home, but in the case of copyrights, the legal construct is unambiguously not intended exclusively to protect natural rights or incomes for creators, but instead "To promote the progress of science and useful arts".
The real challenge is that there's no inherent bright line or Schelling focus[0] that defines where that balance lies, between fair compensation to creators, and unlocking that artificial monopoly for We The People. Death of the author comes closest, but that could also leave families stranded after an untimely passing of a creative breadwinner. Death of the author + 18-25 (protecting income for dependents), might be the least worst. I'd be interested in hearing arguments for other durations; I don't see an obvious answer.
(It's also curious that copyrights use the language of rights, which are typically thought to be inalienable, yet are transferrable as economic assets in ways that most other rights are not. Not saying that's good or bad, just noteworthy.)
You're arguing rationale, blihp is arguing effect.
You're both correct, FWIW.
The bright line has been researched by economists, based on present-value theory, and at time of publication there's little reason for duration to exceed the 14-28 years under original US copyright law.
The problem is for popular works in the catalogue, a minuscule fraction of the total, for which copyright perpetuities are highly lucrative. As well as the general publishing industry incentive for creating a vast and potentially legally catastrophic level of FUD around virtually all stale works, regardless of actual copyright status.
> It's also curious that copyrights use the language of rights, which are typically thought to be inalienable, yet are transferrable as economic assets in ways that most other rights are not.
As far as I understand it, the word “right” used to simply mean permission granted from some higher authority— “The duke has granted me the right to hunt in his forest”. The idea of inalienable rights came about much later (the Enlightenment?), as permissions granted from some authority higher than all earthly governments.
The reason why the death of the author was chosen is because it's convenient. People write their names on their books and their families declare their deaths when they die. The problems start with how long copyright lasts the older you get. If you write a book with 20 then you probably don't care what happens after your death but when you write it in your 70s the copyright will last a much shorter duration.
The easy hack is obviously to add the average human lifespan on top of the date of death.
In reality every copyrighted work should be dated and then each work can expire individually after a reasonable number of years, lets say 14 years with periodic renewals (in exchange for money).
"This item is not available online ( Limited - search only) due to copyright restrictions.
"You can try to find this item in a library or search in this text to find the frequency and page number of specific words and phrases. This can be especially useful to help you decide if the book is worth buying, checking out from a library, etc." (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b740539)
So this is great news and would be better if there were a usable interface to the copyright registration information, it doesn't materially improve the situation.
Such a long copyright protection period seems insane to me. The added economic incentive for creating stuff today, given the current length of copyright and the risk that the law will change between then and now... it rounds to 0.
Copyright term has nothing to do with incentive for creativity. It isn't about new works. Copyright gets extended so that past works don't fall out of copyright. Google the "mickey mouse copyright extension" graph. The last thing Disney will ever accept is allowing any version of Mickey to become public domain. Next on the list are things like the early Elvis/Beatles recordings. Copyright is extended not to protect future works in the hands of creators, but to allow past works to be monetized by the descendants of those creators.
Since then, the Disney corporation has been working hard to ensure that Mickey’s likeness is a trademark in actual widespread use across many varied product categories. Even if another copyright extension isn’t granted, they’ll still be in a good position to go on the attack against other companies that try to use Mickey for commercial gain.
If that happens, it’ll be interesting to watch; where will the courts draw the line between legitimately using the public-domain films and confusing consumers by using Disney’s trademark which is embedded in that film?
The Steamboat Willie shorts will go public domain on January 1, 2024 under current law--if they are not already in public domain due to Disney failing to observe all the proper copyright steps (this is alleged, but has never been argued, successfully or otherwise, in a court). If Disney desires to extend copyright to keep Mickey Mouse from slipping to the pubic domain, they are rapidly running out of time to do so.
I strongly suspect that next decade will see Mickey Mouse fall into the public domain.
One oddity regarding characters is that the only thing that becomes public domain is the character as portrayed in that public domain material. In the case of Mickey, that means only his appearance in Steamboat Willie would become public domain in 2024, with more material being released to the public domain each year. What that entails is... sort of confusing, I think, and will come down to individual cases. Depending on how it is used, a post-2024 portrayal of Mickey might be a copyright violation or might not be.
Additionally, Mickey is also trademarked, which lasts forever as long as it is used commercially by the owner. So the mouse's likeness is not likely to be public domain as long as the Disney company exists and continues to use it.
I think it's authors who want to give the rights to their children as inheritance. It can't be inheritance if it's not a government protected asset.
As an author, I think copyright should expire upon the death of the author(s). But then, I'm also generally opposed to large inheritances, I think they only serve aristocracy.
I wonder what the economic ramifications of this will be. While the article mentions free volunteer sources, I expect that in short order we're going to see a large number of these books available from commercial vendors for cheap or free. In fact, I fully expect there to be a cottage industry of publishers trawling the new public domain for hidden gems, and churning them out as cheap paperbacks for physical stores. And e-book stores will be giving away public-domain books as incentives to sign up for their services.
I wonder if we'll start seeing an explosion of film or TV series based on newly-free IP.
There's already way more ideas than funds for television, in part because there's not really that many people that can reliably take an idea and turn it into good entertainment.
I am fully aware that demand from on demand services has created somewhat of a golden age of series television. It's still limited by funding, not ideas.
I'm excited to see that it is not only English. There is a large trove of books in Chinese which I have been studying daily for The last 5 years. This is my favorite story on Ycombinator in quite some time.
The United States has bilateral copyright agreements with a number of nations. So... probably most of the whole world, but the actual reality is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that the number in "a number of nations" is not currently determined.
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ In case something is public domain but you can't find a download. That seems to have a huge mount of PDFs. Including public domain and not public domain. But there seems to be a lot of public domain now that is hard to find on 'legit' sites.
I searched for science fiction in subject on Haithi after 1955 and it said only 3 were available for full view because the others were copyrighted. Except many of them weren't copyrighted, they just wrote that inaccurately.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20591071
(Although this one is a proper news article, and that was a blog post.)