[HN Gopher] January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 192...
___________________________________________________________________
January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to
all
Author : CharlesW
Score : 201 points
Date : 2022-12-20 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.law.duke.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.law.duke.edu)
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Excuse my ignorance: does this mean that anybody can "legally"
| (for example) torrent-download Metropolis? Or that can be a
| "free" Netflix-alternative created today with movies that are
| part of the public domain?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Broadly, yes.
|
| But there are details you'd want to ask a lawyer about. Things
| like if you rip one of those movies from a DVD, and that DVD
| was made more recently, you have to be careful not to include
| any creative work done more recently - for example an adjusted
| end credits sequence, coloring, restoration work, or minor re-
| editing.
| chr-s wrote:
| You'll often find these old silent movies with a more
| recently recorded soundtrack which may still be under
| copyright.
|
| For truly free film, I believe you'd need to scan a print of
| the film. I'd be interested to know of any efforts to obtain
| and host truly free archival copies of these old films.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| yes, you can now legally torrent metropolis. You can also make
| derivative works (e.g. you personally could make Metropolis 2:
| The Reckoning!) without fear of consequence.
| niij wrote:
| yes
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain :
|
| > Because those rights have expired, anyone can legally use or
| reference those works without permission.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Yes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Internet Archive
| already has torrents of public domain film.
|
| There's also Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks for public
| domain books. Wikimedia Commons has a huge archive of public
| domain images and sound recordings.
| jonah-archive wrote:
| We're having a contest to remix public domain material that
| will be judged at our in-person Public Domain Day party on
| January 20th! Check it out:
| http://blog.archive.org/2022/11/30/public-domain-
| day-2023-re...
| nightpool wrote:
| Yes and yes (in fact, there are already plenty of websites you
| can find out there that do that--many of them seem to just be
| ads-filled scraper sites hotlinking / embedding from
| archive.org)
| 33955985 wrote:
| Copyright should be life of the author/s full stop.
| chihuahua wrote:
| But then we'd get sob stories about how this condemns Walt
| Disney's great-great-grandchildren to starving in the street.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| It's absolutely shameful that public domain has been pushed so
| far back. I say make it ten years max.
| not2b wrote:
| The Berne Convention (an international agreement) requires at
| least 50 years of protection, and the US signed it. But 50 is a
| lot less than 95.
| mod50ack wrote:
| 50 years of protection after the death of the author.
| twiddling wrote:
| If AI is the author then what?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Nothing AI created can have copyright under current law.
| not2b wrote:
| It's 70 in the US now. From the US Copyright Office: "As a
| general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978,
| copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus
| an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a
| pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright
| endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first
| publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its
| creation, whichever expires first. For works first
| published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on
| several factors."
| Thorentis wrote:
| Our current copyright is far far too long. 20 years would be far
| more reasonable. We can talk about side issues all we want, but
| at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the ability
| to generate profit. 20 years is more than enough time to profit
| from creative works. Are we as a society really saying that 75+
| years is how much time people ought to be profiting from creative
| works? An absurd proposition in almost any other industry or
| pursuit.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| OTOH, there's a huge amount of content out there that's
| _formally_ and _legally_ in the public domain already but not
| really findable /discoverable via detailed cataloging, or
| easily usable (and reusable) by 21st-c. standards. Zillions of
| random page scans up on Google Books, Hathitrust and the
| Internet Archive. If what you genuinely care about is expanding
| access to the legacy of our intellectual history, the low-
| hanging fruit really is very low.
|
| Beyond clear cases like ensuring preservation of materials that
| are obviously at risk, it's kinda hard to argue and lobby for a
| shorter copyright term when we're collectively ignoring what's
| long been available for the taking.
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| All of this IP law was written well before the large-scale
| adoption of the internet which has greatly accelerated the
| proliferation of ideas and and largely commoditized ingenuity.
| It's insane we haven't lowered the current timeline. Some
| commenters are mentioning the current folks in power who stand
| to lose a lot pushing back on change. That's probably the most
| plausible reason I can think of but curious of any others.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Imagine creating something in your 20s and you stop earning off
| it in your 40s. I think it should be until the death of the
| creator.
| silisili wrote:
| As was posited in another comment, if we're encouraging
| innovation here, that would help the point. Encourage
| creators to have to create again.
|
| As an aside - I'd imagine for most works, the vast majority
| of earnings would come from the first 20 years. I mean,
| people aren't flocking to the theatre to see Titanic anymore,
| yeah? I'm sure there's some streaming deals and licenses to
| show and whatnot, but nothing like theatre earnings.
| ww520 wrote:
| Yes. The copyright duration needs to be shorten.
|
| To grandfather in the existing copyrights, any new ones will
| have one year shortened every year until the 20 year mark
| reached. Then all copyright work have 20 years. That's it.
| andirk wrote:
| Seeing as the USA's ultra affluent crust is grossly crowded
| with generational wealth, I don't think they'd like the idea of
| removing any of their profits, however long ago and however
| void of any of their own toil, regardless of the overall good
| it would do.
| autoexec wrote:
| > at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the
| ability to generate profit
|
| That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point. The
| point was to promote the creation of new creative works. That's
| it. The way to do that was making sure that creators had a
| limited time where they could exclusively profit from their
| efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was never
| what copyright was all about.
|
| Today, creating/protecting profit is what it's been abused to
| accomplish though, often hurting the creation of new works, and
| most often not even for the benefit of the actual creators.
|
| 20 years was more than enough time for people to profit from
| their works when worldwide distribution was basically
| impossible, advertising was a joke compared to what we have
| today, and it was a massive investment to publish at all. Now
| you can publish for close to nothing and advertise and
| distribute worldwide in seconds. 20 years is at least 2x too
| long. 10 years seems far more reasonable to me.
|
| If we're reworking the system we also need to make sure that
| DRM doesn't prevent works from being useful after they've been
| returned to the public domain. That's a consideration they
| didn't have to worry about when copyright protections were
| being drafted, but it's increasingly going to lock us out of
| our own culture.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Is it possible that the extremely long copyright time still
| succeeds in promoting the creation of new works? For example,
| under copyright, you can't take Mickey Mouse, throw
| sunglasses on him, then re-release all of the existing work,
| because it's not protected by the fair use clause. However,
| if you were to create something demonstrably different to the
| point where it does qualify for fair use, then suddenly
| you've created new media that you have the copyright for and
| can do whatever you wish (including sell it; whether or not
| it's used for commercial purposes is only a factor in fair
| use determinations, it doesn't instantly disqualify it for
| fair use).
|
| The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the
| ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it in
| a way that makes it take on a new meaning.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the
| ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it
| in a way that makes it take on a new meaning.
|
| No... fair use doesn't work like you think it does and it's
| a only a defense that has to be tested in court where
| you'll be up against the legal team of a billion dollar
| media industry that has connections and ties at the highest
| levels of the justice system
|
| Once something is in the public domain you can use it to
| create new works that are completely transformative without
| risking losing everything in a lawsuit.
|
| Vast amounts of new and truly innovative creative works are
| prevented from being created because of our existing
| copyright laws. Music is the worst at this where just a
| couple of notes being too similar to some other song can
| cause you lose everything. People have lost fortunes just
| for writing a new and unique song that just happened to be
| in the same _genre_ as another song.
| (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you-
| copy-a...)
|
| Look at what one artist had to do (and pay) to get her film
| seen by the public at all:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sita-sings-the-copyright-
| bl...
|
| If those songs had been fully in the public domain, her
| amazing and transformative film (which I'd recommend to
| anyone) would have had no issues at all. How many artists
| aren't willing or able to go through what she did and just
| give up? How many musicians are writing songs that will
| never see the light of day because of fear that some song
| they've never heard before will be used to take everything
| from them? They can sign over all their rights to the RIAA
| and hope that's enough to protect them, or they risk being
| sued.
|
| The public domain is critical for artists to be free to
| create entirely new works and build on old ones to create
| new works as well.
| btdmaster wrote:
| If fair use meant the same thing as new work, then yes
| certainly.
|
| For now: https://mimiandeunice.com/2011/07/29/fair-use/
| zqfuz wrote:
| "making sure that creators had a limited time where they
| could exclusively profit" sounds like "protection of profit"
| to me.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| Right, but it's the means not the end.
| autoexec wrote:
| That was a means to an end, not the end itself. That's the
| point. The goal of copyright has always been very clear. It
| was for encouraging the creation of new works.
| godelski wrote:
| Done through the means of ensuring that the original
| artist may profit off of their own hard work and no one
| else can steal the hard work and profit off it. The abuse
| you're talking about is the extension of the same
| mechanism that allows rights owners to profit for much
| longer periods of time, which actually discourages the
| creation of new works. This can all be true because there
| aren't binary solutions and things need nuance.
| ep103 wrote:
| Its the Mickey Mouse problem. Disney doesn't want Mickey or
| related works to enter public domain, because it would be a
| huge knock to their current empire.
|
| Still, this seems rather easily solvable to naive little old
| me.
|
| 20 year copyright by default, with a 20 year review cycle
| process an individual/company can apply to to ask for
| extension, on the condition that they can prove harm to newly
| generated IP, if the copyright is not-renewed. Still using
| Mickey Mouse to generate new works of non-derivative IP, and
| copyright of Mickey Mouse isn't causing damage to any other
| competing agencies (the way holding IP to a new drug or
| invention would)? Fine, renew granted.
| clcaev wrote:
| Or, beyond 28 years, if the work is not released to the
| public domain, have an annual copyright tax based upon a
| "fair market" assessment of the property. To keep assessment
| real, perhaps let there be an auction starting at 2x the
| taxed value.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Why should Disney get an infinite copyright? I think
| copyright should be limited to natural persons. No one
| involved in the creation of Mickey Mouse is still alive.
| Imagine if the Brothers Grimm, Inc. had just kept infinitely
| renewing their copyright claim? Disney wouldn't even exist.
| Disney is a company that was _built_ upon works in the public
| domain and now is depriving the rest of the world from the
| very thing that allowed Disney to flourish in the first
| place.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Then what happens as humans solve aging and no one dies?
| There should be an age limit regardless of natural or
| corporate persons.
| dudul wrote:
| I feel like we can revisit when we reach this point :)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Franz Kafka, Amerika
|
| Looking forward to someone taking AI/ChatGPT and finishing the
| unfinished book.
| cauthon wrote:
| Question about how public domain works in the US, specifically
| with regards to this comment in the original post:
|
| > Here are just a few of the works that will be in the US public
| domain in 2023. 2 They were supposed to go into the public domain
| in 2003, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this
| could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended
| their copyright term to 95 years.
|
| Is the "20 year pause button" permanent, i.e. copyright term for
| all works moving forward will be 95 years? Or will that
| eventually expire and the term will revert to 75 years?
| not2b wrote:
| Permanent. The term is 95 years now, unless Congress changes
| the law. And reducing it would be very difficult legally, with
| copyright holders suing for their theoretical losses if
| Congress "deprives" them of 20 years of protection that they
| now consider their property.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I don't know if those suits would succeed. If Congress gives
| someone a benefit and then gets rid of it, then you can't sue
| the government to force them to keep giving it to you.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym), The Tower Treasure (the first
| Hardy Boys book)
|
| I loved those books growing up
| lb1lf wrote:
| As did I, my father had talked my grandfather into buying them
| as they were released in Norwegian in the fifties, so I had
| some fifty books on my shelves and read them all, some several
| times.
|
| I adored them, but in hindsight: Gawds, how formulaic they
| were. I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably
| churn out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days.
|
| Excellent childhood memories, though - along with Anthony
| Buckeridge's Jennings books, I spent more time with Hardy Boys
| books during rainy summers than I care admit.
| twiddling wrote:
| "I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably churn
| out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days."
|
| AI written pulp
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Steamboat Willie, which was an early (first?) appearance of
| Mickey Mouse, is 1928 so this next year could be interesting for
| copyright law
| fjfaase wrote:
| Please note that this list is for the U.S.A.. If you live in
| another part of the world, these books might still be
| copyrighted. For example, in the Netherlands (like most of the
| EU), it is +70 years, meaning we still have to wait 5 more years.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_public_domain
| mod50ack wrote:
| Note that for a number of EU countries, US works are in the
| public domain once they are PD-US due to the application of the
| rule of the shorter term.
| londons_explore wrote:
| And in other countries, it's really unlikely you'll end up in
| prison or sued for using something that is both 75 years old
| and already public domain elsewhere in the world.
| fjfaase wrote:
| There are a number of books that are based on Winnie-the-
| Pooh and quoting fragments. For a long time, I have had the
| idea to write a kind of annotated version of the stories
| with references to all the books that reference the text.
|
| I understand Disney has the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh
| character and that they still might cause trouble for those
| who publish text from the books in Europe.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public
| domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's
| Battle of the Century entering the commons. Also notable: Wings,
| winner of the first-ever best picture Academy Award; The Lodger,
| Hitchcock's first thriller; and FW "Nosferatu" Mirnau's Sunrise.
|
| _Metropolis_ is so influential that I 'd call it a must-watch
| for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind.
| Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its
| influence is everywhere.
|
| _Sunrise_ is one hell of a roller-coaster of a movie. As with
| anything in the silent era (especially the non-comedy films) it
| 's a bit of an _acquired taste_ but it 's among the earliest
| films that I didn't just find interesting or funny, but that
| really got me on the edge of my seat, several times. It's got
| some real "yell at the screen" moments :-) I enjoyed it way more
| than the director's more-iconic _Nosferatu_. Though, for my
| money, it 's no _M_ or _The Passion of Joan of Arc_ , as silent
| film dramas go. Still, really good, and I think a lot of critics
| hold it in far higher regard than I do.
|
| Haven't seen the rest.
|
| > On the literary front, we have Virginia Woolf's To The
| Lighthouse, AA Milne's Now We Are Six, Hemingway's Men Without
| Women, Faulkner's Mosquitoes, Christie's The Big Four, Wharton's
| Twilight Sleep, Hesse's Steppenwolf (in German), Kafka's Amerika
| (in German), and Proust's Le Temps retrouve (in French).
|
| Damn, what a powerhouse year in literature. And look at that, my
| favorite novel ( _To the Lighthouse_ ) is about to be public
| domain!
|
| The Holmes news is awesome, too. Bunch of copyright troll dicks
| have been making doing anything with Holmes risky for years.
| Great that everyone can more-easily ignore them.
| slater- wrote:
| yes, it's true, I keep hearing the people everywhere clamoring
| for their shot at remaking "The Jazz Singer."
|
| (something something blackface)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It was re-made in 1980 with Neil Diamond in the lead role:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film)
| whycome wrote:
| Metropolis + AI could result in some cool outputs.
| runarberg wrote:
| It actually could be kind of interesting to have AI fill in
| the missing segments. I believe there are only 2 remaining,
| and we roughly know what is supposed to be there, but not
| able to restore it because of how few original copies remain.
| So you should be able to do a supervised learning to
| interpolate the remaining scenes and be fairly confident that
| it matches the version that was premiered in 1927.
| grujicd wrote:
| I disliked Metropolis quite a lot. Maybe it was influential and
| was probably a gamechanger at a time. But is it good in any way
| from today's point of view? I'm not talking about effects or
| scenography which could not technically be better at that era.
| I'm talking about acting and script which look abysmal to me. I
| would probably not have this kind of opinion but it's often on
| some kind of top list and my expectations were high. Maybe I'm
| missing something? Or is it just touted for historical
| significance?
|
| It's not that I have a problem with old movies. Casablanca came
| out only 15 years after Metropolis and is perfect in every way
| I care about.
| wazoox wrote:
| Acting in silent movies is entirely different from what came
| later. That's why most silent stars didn't make it into the
| "talkie" era.
|
| Just like aliens in 60s movies speak English and are
| obviously people in disguise, you just have to adhere to the
| conventions of the time.
|
| Similarly, the ways to make the script go forward are usually
| quite different from what came later, because of the constant
| interruption required by text inserts.
|
| Last, the musical score is important. A bad one can make of
| break a silent film (versions from archive.org and similar
| sites often have random music instead of a true score).
|
| So you may need to learn the way of the silent movies before
| really appreciating them (out of slapstick comedy such as
| Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton).
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Silent-era sensibilities are very different from even WWII-
| era talkies. The field developed whole bunch, very fast. A
| lot of those films are difficult to appreciate without active
| effort to acclimatize oneself to them, much the same way lots
| of people bounce off classical music or jazz (or hip-hop, or
| heavy metal, or most musical genres, really) until they've
| had a bit more exposure and learned _how_ to enjoy them.
| Plus, a lot of them were leaning _really hard_ into one
| movement or another, and Metropolis is one of those (many)
| cases, so what it 's _aiming_ to do well isn 't necessarily
| the same set of things most modern films would aim to do well
| (and indeed, off the beaten path you can find plenty of
| modern films that similarly target some particular effect or
| art movement, which can also take a bit of adjustment to
| one's expectations to enjoy)
|
| Acting in particular has gone through some serious changes as
| fashions come and go, and most any style one encounters aside
| from what's now in-vogue tends to come off as corny. Even
| Casablanca, which is ahead of its time in many ways (for an
| American movie, anyway--the US lagged in some film technique
| developments at the time, compared with other markets)
| features acting that's less-naturalistic than what's popular
| now. Also, changes in editing have really made a difference
| in how performances come across, which is _part_ of why
| watching a scene being filmed from a behind-the-scenes camera
| can make the acting seem off or bad--because it 's not being
| filtered through modern shot-framing and editing.
|
| IMO the comedies suffer the least and remain fairly
| accessible (no matter when you were born, if you can't laugh
| at Chaplin and Keaton, there's something wrong with you) but,
| for most people, approaching the rest of the silent era is
| more a _project_ than something you can just dip into here
| and there and expect to have a good time. The field was
| immature, the whole "silent" part of it takes some getting
| used to, and there was a whole lot of art-movement-influenced
| experimentation going on.
|
| There is, however, a lot of variety in styles in the silent
| film era, especially in foreign film. If you don't like 20s
| German expressionist films, try films of the 30s (IMO the
| silent era got a _lot_ better toward the end), try American
| films, try French, try Spanish, Russian, stuff like that.
| Weird absurdist Spanish films that evoke the atmosphere of
| Monty Python, shocking short films, heart-rending dramas,
| cheap action schlock, about-the-town documentary or semi-
| fictional films, heavy-handed allegory--lots of stuff to
| explore. Plus the comedies, of which many are excellent and
| most are fairly accessible to a modern audience.
| nix0n wrote:
| The thing that you're missing is the reappearance in other
| places of Metropolis's visual style. It's probably easier to
| see if you're a fan of Art Deco. It might also be easier to
| see if you watch Tron, which also was influential via visual
| style (in a different direction and lesser degree than
| Metropolis).
| kristopolous wrote:
| Will the relevant YouTube videos that are "blocked in my country
| on copyright grounds" get unblocked on that day?
|
| Anyone from YouTube know if this is the case?
| dark-star wrote:
| ...that is, unless Disney can force another extension to
| Copyright law in the next couple days. I wouldn't be surprised if
| they did (or tried, at least)
| Gigachad wrote:
| Tbh it would have been better if we just allowed corporations
| to continue paying to extend their own copyrights forever and
| everything that's no longer commercially viable or doesn't have
| an entity owning it just gets freed quickly.
| efsavage wrote:
| Yes, they should be able to pay a fee to extend beyond a fair
| time (~50 years?) based on a declared value of the work. To
| ensure the declared value is realistic, they then must sell
| the work to anyone that offers more than the declared value.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Can you explain how this is better? Also, how would we write
| a law to determine if something is "commercially viable"?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The idea is specifically to solve the orphan works problem.
|
| Practically speaking, life+70 is not that far off from
| perpetual copyright _anyway_. Nobody cares if a book
| published today will be escheated to the public domain in
| 2093, and very few works from 1927 are valuable enough to
| retain copyright today. In fact, it 's so valueless that
| the vast majority of works still under copyright do not
| have public documentation of title. The only way to find
| out who owns these works is to get sued for pirating them.
|
| So the idea is to create some kind of small formality that
| people have to jump through in order to retain ownership
| over a work, because _vastly more_ works will hit the
| public domain even if it means Mickey Mouse will always and
| forever live in a cramped pet store cage shaped like a
| circle-C.
|
| How to define "commercially viable" is... complicated. You
| can either make copyright fully pay-to-play to soak Disney,
| or you can err on the side of cheap renewals. I've also
| heard talk of sliding-scales based on taxable value of the
| property under copyright. I don't think it really matters
| as long as we have a reasonable process to strip orphan
| works of their copyright protection.
| bombcar wrote:
| Mickey Mouse should be under copyright and Mickey Mouse
| should be taxed to an inch of his nasty rodent life are
| two separate questions and should be handled as such. A
| small fee should be fine (much less than the total cost
| of a patent, say) perhaps with a requirement to keep the
| work publicly available (print on demand and digital
| makes this relatively easy).
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > The only way to find out who owns these works is to get
| sued for pirating them.
|
| Basically "old time radio" too.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The copyright owner determines that. Put some price on
| renewal and let the owner decide if they want to pay it or
| not. For the vast majority of content, it's worthless after
| x years and they will just let it lapse.
|
| We could then shorten copyright down to something like 20
| years and anything still being sold or used can be renewed
| while completely obsolete gameboy games become freed.
|
| Even if the fee was something like $10/year, probably the
| majority of copyrights would not be renewed.
| MarioMan wrote:
| If the copyright makes more money than it costs to
| maintain, then it is financially viable. I often see this
| approach proposed alongside a renewal fee that rises each
| time it is renewed, so that works will eventually become
| too expensive to maintain copyright on and thus aren't held
| in perpetuity.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| The law isn't making that determination, the entities
| paying to indefinitely extend its copyright are (presumably
| at exponentially increasing rates). If it isn't viable,
| they don't pay and the copyright lapses.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| As in as a company you have to pay to extend copyright on a
| certain work.
| regulation_d wrote:
| I strongly disagree. And not just because copyright in
| perpetuity is unconstitutional. The value in a rich public
| domain is vastly under-appreciated. The default position is
| that IP is not protectable by law, because the free exchange
| of ideas is extremely important to modern society.
|
| Certainly we have carved out exceptions to that default
| position, but only for very clear and distinct policy
| reasons. 1. consumer protection (trademark) and 2.
| incentivizing innovation and expression (patent and
| copyright).
|
| The idea that my great-great-grandchildren might want to
| benefit from my having written a book really does not factor
| into whether I might write a book. If I'm not incentivized by
| life of the author + 70 years, I would probably not otherwise
| be incentivized.
|
| Also, corporations don't pay to extend their copyrights.
| Other than the money Disney pays their lobbyists.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm doubting a Republican Congress will go out of its way to
| support Disney. The fake "culture wars" may yield some
| unintended benefits.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Steamboat Willie doesn't go public domain until 2024, so
| there's technically another year.
|
| Disney is unlikely to attempt to push through another copyright
| term extension (see https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... for fuller details). The two
| main reasons are that there is a much more forceful caucus in
| politics against copyright extension than there was 25 years
| ago, and the arguments for doing so are weaker (the copyright
| extension 25 years ago was partially driven by raising
| copyright term in the US from "life + 50" to "life + 70", in
| line with European standards).
|
| If one pays careful attention however, one would note that
| Disney has, over the past few years, started using a clip from
| Steamboat Willie more aggressively in its films, which has led
| many to wonder if they're planning on taking down anyone who
| distributes Steamboat Willie on the basis of trademark
| violations instead.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I've noticed them putting steam boat willie in all of the
| credits, at the same time things were going into the public
| domain, I had always assumed that was the game plan.
|
| Make steamboat willie trademark not copyright, and the laws
| become a lot more flexible around that.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They have said they wont because people notice and care now.
|
| Thats an interest way of interacting in society. I want that
| power.
| Sunspark wrote:
| No extension in the next couple days, but there will be another
| 20+ year extension purchased within the next 11 years. Why? To
| make sure 1938 doesn't go PD.
|
| I will leave it up to the reader as an exercise to determine
| what is special about 1938.
| daemoens wrote:
| What's special about 1938?
| leviathant wrote:
| I'm going to guess the reference here is Superman
| andirk wrote:
| When Itchy & Scratchy teamed up for the war effort [0]?
| Documents on Prescott Bush, grandfather of Bush Jr, who
| happily sold steel to the Nazis and created the current Bush
| family pile [1]?
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vhL6QsPGac
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondw
| orl...
| ebiester wrote:
| Is the start of the golden age of comic books enough? I'm
| honestly not convinced.
| jedberg wrote:
| They stopped doing that a while ago. They realized it didn't
| matter and was more beneficial for them so they can scoop up
| more public domain and make more movies out of it.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Kids don't care about Mickey they care about Rocket Raccoon.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's incredible the amount of damage they've done in the
| meantime. If only they can rollback the changes they, and
| their lackeys, pushed through.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > They realized it didn't matter and was more beneficial for
| them so they can scoop up more public domain and make more
| movies out of it.
|
| I don't have anything concrete to back this up, but it seems
| more likely to me that they just don't see much potential
| revenue in content from the 1920's, so they see little to be
| gained from further spending on copyright-extension lobbying.
|
| Put another way, they've already succeeded. Copyright terms
| aren't actually unending, but in profit terms (or practical
| terms more broadly) the difference is minimal.
| dang wrote:
| Related (but we moved most comments hither):
|
| _2023 's public domain is a banger_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34071163
| jedberg wrote:
| So in theory every streaming service could put all these movies
| on their service, right?
|
| And I could sell a box set of "top movies of 1927"?
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| In the US, yes (not willing to make a claim about IP laws in
| every country).
|
| Although I'm not sure how big the market will be as it will
| also be completely legal to share and download them on internet
| for free.
| pavlov wrote:
| Yes. But they are black-and-white and silent, which severely
| limits the audience these days.
|
| Some of these movies have circulated with more recent
| soundtracks, and those are off limits. In particular there's a
| somewhat infamous 1984 version of "Metropolis" with music
| produced by Giorgio Moroder and Freddie Mercury. That won't be
| in the public domain until 2079...
| not2b wrote:
| A streaming service could hire musicians to do a new score
| for public domain silent movies, they would then have the
| exclusive right to distribute the combined work.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Yes, yes.
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