[HN Gopher] What will enter the public domain in 2025?
___________________________________________________________________
What will enter the public domain in 2025?
Author : Tomte
Score : 374 points
Date : 2024-12-01 20:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (publicdomainreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (publicdomainreview.org)
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| It's advent calendar-style, so
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_in_public_domain> might be
| more informative.
| leoc wrote:
| _Red Harvest_ is in there? You can be sure that number of film
| and TV writers, and perhaps directors and producers, have set
| their alarm clocks for that one. https://crimereads.com/the-
| strange-cinematic-afterlife-of-re...
| cxr wrote:
| You may be interested to know that the story for The Maltese
| Falcon, not listed, will also be entering public domain
| because it was published in monthly installments in Black
| Mask magazine before it was published as a novel. (Any
| changes between the publication in Black Mask and those made
| for the novelization, if significant enough, will of course
| still be under copyright and so the novelization proper still
| won't be entering public domain for another 13 months.)
|
| We have had difficulty getting our hands on these issues,
| though (or scans of them).
|
| It's interesting that AMC just launched a series featuring
| Sam Spade this year, the year _before_ the character goes
| into the public domain...
| qingcharles wrote:
| When you say, "we" who do you mean? Are the magazines
| particularly rare?
| cxr wrote:
| Those of us trying to get them scanned in and online.
|
| Black Mask is pretty rare. Brooks Hefner at James Madison
| University oversaw the acquisition/accession (I think) of
| their Black Mask collection, of which they have quite a
| bit in comparison to other places, but it's still
| incomplete. The Ransom Center in Austin specializes in
| rare and collectible items, but only has one or two
| issues. The Library of Congress may well have a complete
| collection, but what they do have isn't digitized because
| the pages are brittle and are literally falling apart
| (even moreso than other/older printed material).
| blacksqr wrote:
| Godspeed to all working on this.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm guessing you're already on the Pulp Scans group,
| right?
| cxr wrote:
| No.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Dashiel Hammet died in 1961 so wouldn't that mean the
| Maltese Falcon will still in PD until 2031 in the EU?
| cxr wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_the_shorter_term
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| No notable wroters, except one: Par Lagerkvist
| kayge wrote:
| Or if you want to peek ahead like a kid who's bound for the
| Naughty list, you can use dev tools and add the 'will-open'
| class to any of those <button> elements :)
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I, for one, am looking forward to _A Farewell to Arms and
| Zombies_ , inevitably coming out soon.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I guess putting a book on a trash can to trap your possessed
| severed hand is considered fair use.
| cle wrote:
| Here's the full list, base64-encoded (since HN doesn't support
| spoilers...) QSBSb29tIG9mIE9uZSdzIE93biBieSBWaX
| JnaW5pYSBXb29sZgpUaGUgTWFuIFdpdGhpbiBieSBHcmFoYW0gR3JlZW5lCkhlbnJ
| pIE1hdGlzc2UKVGhlIFNvdW5kIGFuZCB0aGUgRnVyeSBieSBXaWxsaWFtIEZhdWxr
| bmVyCkZyaWRhIEthaGxvCk1hZ2ljayBpbiBUaGVvcnkgYW5kIFByYWN0aWNlIGJ5I
| EFsZWlzdGVyIENyb3dsZXkKRHVrZSBFbGxpbmd0b24KTWFnbmlmaWNlbnQgT2JzZX
| NzaW9uIGJ5IExsb3lkIEMuIERvdWdsYXMKQ2hhcmxlcyBJdmVzCkEgRmFyZXdlbGw
| gdG8gQXJtcyBieSBFcm5lc3QgSGVtaW5nd2F5ClRoZWEgdm9uIEhhcmJvdQpCZXJs
| aW4gQWxleGFuZGVycGxhdHogYnkgQWxmcmVkIETDtmJsaW4KUm9iZXJ0IENhcGEKT
| GF1Z2hpbmcgQm95IGJ5IE9saXZlciBMYSBGYXJnZQpDb2xldHRlCkxvb2sgSG9tZX
| dhcmQsIEFuZ2VsIGJ5IFRob21hcyBXb2xmZQpBdWd1c3RlIEx1bWnDqHJlClByb2N
| lc3MgYW5kIFJlYWxpdHkgYnkgQWxmcmVkIE5vcnRoIFdoaXRlaGVhZApEYXVnaHRl
| ciBvZiBFYXJ0aCBieSBBZ25lcyBTbWVkbGV5CkFkb2xwaCBHb3R0bGllYgpHb29kL
| UJ5ZSB0byBBbGwgVGhhdCBieSBSb2JlcnQgR3JhdmVzClRoZSBTdG9yeSBvZiBNeS
| BFeHBlcmltZW50cyB3aXRoIFRydXRoIGJ5IE1haGF0bWEgR2FuZGhpCkxpbCBHcmV
| lbgpBbGwgUXVpZXQgb24gdGhlIFdlc3Rlcm4gRnJvbnQgKHRyYW5zbGF0aW9uKSBi
| eSBFcmljaCBNYXJpYSBSZW1hcnF1ZQpUaGUgR29vZCBDb21wYW5pb25zIGJ5IEouI
| EIuIFByaWVzdGxleQpIdWRzb24gUml2ZXIgQnJhY2tldGVkIGJ5IEVkaXRoIFdoYX
| J0b24KVGhlIE1hcmFjb3QgRGVlcCBieSBBcnRodXIgQ29uYW4gRG95bGUKQW5uZSB
| TZXh0b24KTGVzIEVuZmFudHMgVGVycmlibGVzIGJ5IEplYW4gQ29jdGVhdQpEb2Rz
| d29ydGggYnkgU2luY2xhaXIgTGV3aXMKRG9uYWxkIEdvaW5lcwo=
| zamadatix wrote:
| For those on the lazy side: A pastebin link option
|
| https://pastebin.com/raw/9wfPfzT3
| saghm wrote:
| At the risk of the above comment being edited and making this
| stop working, here's an alternative lazy version:
| curl https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42291112 | grep
| 'QSBSb[^<]\+' -o | base64 --decode
| zamadatix wrote:
| The lazy version is more targeted for the mobile users
| browsing by for the first ~24 hours not wanting to try to
| copy the data or find a way to run commands.
|
| For the desktop-ers, future travellers, or just generally
| private/skeptical mobile users among us I'd recommend this
| method https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42291434 for
| the private long lasting lazy experience (no external tools
| necessary, but you do need to perform a manual copy into
| your URL bar).
| arealaccount wrote:
| Surprised Gandhi is on that list, was he generally someone
| known to assert his intellectual property rights?
| macintux wrote:
| Copyright, at least in the U.S., is automatic.
|
| He would have to actively assert that he was releasing it
| into the public domain (and IIRC, although my last discussion
| on the topic was ~20 years ago, such a release had not yet
| been tested in court).
| callingbull wrote:
| > Copyright, at least in the U.S., is automatic.
|
| It is now, but back then a work was public domain if
| released without a valid copyright notice.
|
| Charade, a 1963 film, entered the public domain immediately
| on release.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film)#Public-
| dom...
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It wasn't automatic in the past, which notably led to Night
| of the Living Dead accidentally becoming public domain on
| release.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Having known of the man I would say copyright would have
| been, if at all, at somewhere in the bottom of bottom list of
| battles he was (and had to be) fighting.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| And if you can't read base64, a base16 encoded version below.
| 4120526F6F6D206F66204F6E652773204F776E2062792056697267696E69612
| 0576F6F6C660A546865204D616E2057697468696E2062792047726168616D20
| 477265656E650A48656E7269204D6174697373650A54686520536F756E64206
| 16E642074686520467572792062792057696C6C69616D204661756C6B6E6572
| 0A4672696461204B61686C6F0A4D616769636B20696E205468656F727920616
| E6420507261637469636520627920416C6569737465722043726F776C65790A
| 44756B6520456C6C696E67746F6E0A4D61676E69666963656E74204F6273657
| 373696F6E206279204C6C6F796420432E20446F75676C61730A436861726C65
| 7320497665730A41204661726577656C6C20746F2041726D732062792045726
| E6573742048656D696E677761790A5468656120766F6E20486172626F750A42
| 65726C696E20416C6578616E646572706C61747A20627920416C66726564204
| 4F6626C696E0A526F6265727420436170610A4C61756768696E6720426F7920
| 6279204F6C69766572204C612046617267650A436F6C657474650A4C6F6F6B2
| 0486F6D65776172642C20416E67656C2062792054686F6D617320576F6C6665
| 0A41756775737465204C756D69E872650A50726F6365737320616E642052656
| 16C69747920627920416C66726564204E6F727468205768697465686561640A
| 4461756768746572206F662045617274682062792041676E657320536D65646
| C65790A41646F6C706820476F74746C6965620A476F6F642D42796520746F20
| 416C6C205468617420627920526F62657274204772617665730A54686520537
| 46F7279206F66204D79204578706572696D656E747320776974682054727574
| 68206279204D616861746D612047616E6468690A4C696C20477265656E0A416
| C6C205175696574206F6E20746865205765737465726E2046726F6E74202874
| 72616E736C6174696F6E29206279204572696368204D617269612052656D617
| 27175650A54686520476F6F6420436F6D70616E696F6E73206279204A2E2042
| 2E205072696573746C65790A487564736F6E20526976657220427261636B657
| 465642062792045646974682057686172746F6E0A546865204D617261636F74
| 20446565702062792041727468757220436F6E616E20446F796C650A416E6E6
| 520536578746F6E0A4C657320456E66616E7473205465727269626C65732062
| 79204A65616E20436F63746561750A446F6473776F7274682062792053696E6
| 36C616972204C657769730A446F6E616C6420476F696E65730A
| clarkdale wrote:
| Maybe more helpful would be base 256 so it renders in ascii.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Doesn't look as cool.
| remram wrote:
| Stick a data: prefix in front and it'll decode in web browsers:
| data:text/plain;base64,QSBSb29tIG9mIE9uZSdzIE93biBieSBWaXJnaW5p
| YSBXb29sZgpUaGUgTWFuIFdpdGhpbiBieSBHcmFoYW0gR3JlZW5lCkhlbnJpIE1
| hdGlzc2UKVGhlIFNvdW5kIGFuZCB0aGUgRnVyeSBieSBXaWxsaWFtIEZhdWxrbm
| VyCkZyaWRhIEthaGxvCk1hZ2ljayBpbiBUaGVvcnkgYW5kIFByYWN0aWNlIGJ5I
| EFsZWlzdGVyIENyb3dsZXkKRHVrZSBFbGxpbmd0b24KTWFnbmlmaWNlbnQgT2Jz
| ZXNzaW9uIGJ5IExsb3lkIEMuIERvdWdsYXMKQ2hhcmxlcyBJdmVzCkEgRmFyZXd
| lbGwgdG8gQXJtcyBieSBFcm5lc3QgSGVtaW5nd2F5ClRoZWEgdm9uIEhhcmJvdQ
| pCZXJsaW4gQWxleGFuZGVycGxhdHogYnkgQWxmcmVkIETDtmJsaW4KUm9iZXJ0I
| ENhcGEKTGF1Z2hpbmcgQm95IGJ5IE9saXZlciBMYSBGYXJnZQpDb2xldHRlCkxv
| b2sgSG9tZXdhcmQsIEFuZ2VsIGJ5IFRob21hcyBXb2xmZQpBdWd1c3RlIEx1bWn
| DqHJlClByb2Nlc3MgYW5kIFJlYWxpdHkgYnkgQWxmcmVkIE5vcnRoIFdoaXRlaG
| VhZApEYXVnaHRlciBvZiBFYXJ0aCBieSBBZ25lcyBTbWVkbGV5CkFkb2xwaCBHb
| 3R0bGllYgpHb29kLUJ5ZSB0byBBbGwgVGhhdCBieSBSb2JlcnQgR3JhdmVzClRo
| ZSBTdG9yeSBvZiBNeSBFeHBlcmltZW50cyB3aXRoIFRydXRoIGJ5IE1haGF0bWE
| gR2FuZGhpCkxpbCBHcmVlbgpBbGwgUXVpZXQgb24gdGhlIFdlc3Rlcm4gRnJvbn
| QgKHRyYW5zbGF0aW9uKSBieSBFcmljaCBNYXJpYSBSZW1hcnF1ZQpUaGUgR29vZ
| CBDb21wYW5pb25zIGJ5IEouIEIuIFByaWVzdGxleQpIdWRzb24gUml2ZXIgQnJh
| Y2tldGVkIGJ5IEVkaXRoIFdoYXJ0b24KVGhlIE1hcmFjb3QgRGVlcCBieSBBcnR
| odXIgQ29uYW4gRG95bGUKQW5uZSBTZXh0b24KTGVzIEVuZmFudHMgVGVycmlibG
| VzIGJ5IEplYW4gQ29jdGVhdQpEb2Rzd29ydGggYnkgU2luY2xhaXIgTGV3aXMKR
| G9uYWxkIEdvaW5lcwo=
| mdaniel wrote:
| In the spirit of nerd-sniping, it turns out that one needs to
| specify the encoding of those bytes, too, since it defaults
| to charset=us-ascii for some horrible reason
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/URI/Schemes/dat...
|
| data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,QSBSb29tIG9mIE9uZSdzIE93
| biBieSBWaXJnaW5pYSBXb29sZgpUaGUgTWFuIFdpdGhpbiBieSBHcmFoYW0gR
| 3JlZW5lCkhlbnJpIE1hdGlzc2UKVGhlIFNvdW5kIGFuZCB0aGUgRnVyeSBieS
| BXaWxsaWFtIEZhdWxrbmVyCkZyaWRhIEthaGxvCk1hZ2ljayBpbiBUaGVvcnk
| gYW5kIFByYWN0aWNlIGJ5IEFsZWlzdGVyIENyb3dsZXkKRHVrZSBFbGxpbmd0
| b24KTWFnbmlmaWNlbnQgT2JzZXNzaW9uIGJ5IExsb3lkIEMuIERvdWdsYXMKQ
| 2hhcmxlcyBJdmVzCkEgRmFyZXdlbGwgdG8gQXJtcyBieSBFcm5lc3QgSGVtaW
| 5nd2F5ClRoZWEgdm9uIEhhcmJvdQpCZXJsaW4gQWxleGFuZGVycGxhdHogYnk
| gQWxmcmVkIETDtmJsaW4KUm9iZXJ0IENhcGEKTGF1Z2hpbmcgQm95IGJ5IE9s
| aXZlciBMYSBGYXJnZQpDb2xldHRlCkxvb2sgSG9tZXdhcmQsIEFuZ2VsIGJ5I
| FRob21hcyBXb2xmZQpBdWd1c3RlIEx1bWnDqHJlClByb2Nlc3MgYW5kIFJlYW
| xpdHkgYnkgQWxmcmVkIE5vcnRoIFdoaXRlaGVhZApEYXVnaHRlciBvZiBFYXJ
| 0aCBieSBBZ25lcyBTbWVkbGV5CkFkb2xwaCBHb3R0bGllYgpHb29kLUJ5ZSB0
| byBBbGwgVGhhdCBieSBSb2JlcnQgR3JhdmVzClRoZSBTdG9yeSBvZiBNeSBFe
| HBlcmltZW50cyB3aXRoIFRydXRoIGJ5IE1haGF0bWEgR2FuZGhpCkxpbCBHcm
| VlbgpBbGwgUXVpZXQgb24gdGhlIFdlc3Rlcm4gRnJvbnQgKHRyYW5zbGF0aW9
| uKSBieSBFcmljaCBNYXJpYSBSZW1hcnF1ZQpUaGUgR29vZCBDb21wYW5pb25z
| IGJ5IEouIEIuIFByaWVzdGxleQpIdWRzb24gUml2ZXIgQnJhY2tldGVkIGJ5I
| EVkaXRoIFdoYXJ0b24KVGhlIE1hcmFjb3QgRGVlcCBieSBBcnRodXIgQ29uYW
| 4gRG95bGUKQW5uZSBTZXh0b24KTGVzIEVuZmFudHMgVGVycmlibGVzIGJ5IEp
| lYW4gQ29jdGVhdQpEb2Rzd29ydGggYnkgU2luY2xhaXIgTGV3aXMKRG9uYWxk
| IEdvaW5lcwo=
| HPsquared wrote:
| Wow, that's amazing. I've recently been having some mild
| trouble with base64. Just put it in the address bar, of
| course!!
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| This does NOT work in Android/tablet version of Chrome
| (unless I'm doing something wrong). Gonna try it tomorrow on
| my computer.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Just worked in Android Firefox.
| sexy_seedbox wrote:
| Works fine in Kiwi Browser on Android.
| remram wrote:
| It works for me on Chrome 131.0.6778.81 on Android 14. Are
| you sure you copy/pasted right?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Some amazing works of literature in that list.
| GeneticGenesis wrote:
| I know it's not public domain per-say, but for me, the thing
| that's most exciting is that in 2025, the last remaining patents
| on the h.264 (AVC) video codec will expire [1].
|
| Now if only HEVC wasn't such a hot patent / licensing mess.
|
| [1]
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...
| iterance wrote:
| Just thought you might want to know - it's "per se" not "per
| say"/variations thereof.
| asveikau wrote:
| _Per se_ is latin for "for itself".
| casta wrote:
| I'd say "by itself".
| asveikau wrote:
| That's another valid translation for the same
| preposition.
|
| And there are many definitions of English "for" as well.
| This would fit the one used in the phrase "if not for
| this, ..." In other words, for itself = by virtue of
| itself, through the existence of itself.
|
| Also note in terms of Indo European roots, per is a
| cognate with English for.
| dhosek wrote:
| Prepositions are some of the least translatable bits of
| language. For that matter, even without translation they
| tend to get slippery within a language, especially over
| time (one that springs to mind is the whole "quarter of"
| referring to a time which I first encountered some 50
| years ago and still don't know if it's quarter _to_ or
| quarter _after_ ).1
|
| [?]
|
| 1. Cue some dude to tell me in 3...2...12
|
| 2. And this knowledge will promptly disappear from my
| brain five minutes later, sort of like the guy I knew in
| my 20s whose name was either Jack or Chad and to this
| date, I still am not sure, but I do know that every
| single time I called him by name, I got it wrong and it
| totally wasn't on purpose even though he didn't believe
| me.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That's my cue!
|
| I once had a Spanish teacher, who also had problems
| remembering what that kind of time specification stands
| for and I came up with maybe a trick to remember. We do
| the same thing in German, so I guess it translates:
|
| Lets say you have 11:00. That's easy. But what about
| 11:15? We would say "quarter 12", so I guess the English
| version is "quarter of 12". How to memorize, that this is
| 11:15? Well, you can imagine a round clock and the minute
| pointer has moved _quarter of its way to 12_. So you only
| have a quarter of that hour "already done". 10:30? We say
| "half 11". So I guess English is "half of 11", meaning
| that the minute pointer has moved half the way to 11.
|
| Maybe this will help.
|
| (Actually I personally usually don't use those ways of
| specifying the time, neither in English nor in German. I
| just say the 24h format as it is written: "11:15" is
| "eleven fifteen", 13:35 is "thirteen thirtee five" not
| 1pm something.)
| card_zero wrote:
| Whatever "quarter of 12" means in English, whether it's
| 11:45 (quarter to 12) or 12:15 (quarter past 12), it
| definitely isn't 11:15. We do _fraction of an hour
| forward or backward relative to the hour mentioned,_ not
| _fraction of an hour elapsed in approach to hour
| mentioned._
|
| I recently encountered a German asking for the English
| phrase equivalent to _bis unter,_ looking for a phrase
| like "up to below". There isn't one in common use. We
| just don't count things in equivalent ways.
| monkpit wrote:
| Isn't _bis unter_ akin to "just under", or "right up to"?
|
| I feel like either of those could work depending on the
| context and are common in English.
| fhars wrote:
| It is "up to but not including".
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is not great advice - the only way I have heard it
| in English would be "quarter past 11" to mean 11:15. Most
| people would just say "eleven fifteen".
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| If no one says it, did the post above mine just make
| things up and I am trying to explain their invented
| things?
| daveguy wrote:
| You were just wrong. They explicitly gave the understood
| options as 15 before or 15 after. These are the options
| everyone uses in English -- not 45 before or a quarter of
| the hour before. In English no one says quarter of 12 to
| mean 11:15. You just explained it completely different
| from the ways it is interpreted in English. I understand
| the logic and how it might come about. Maybe it's very
| common in German, but it is not used that way in English.
| If you referred to 11:15 in that way to a native English
| speaker you would be misinterpreted.
| tags2k wrote:
| This definitely doesn't translate - if you say "half 11"
| to a British person you are getting them at 11:30, not
| 10:30.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Lets say you have 11:00. That's easy. But what about
| 11:15? We would say "quarter 12", so I guess the English
| version is "quarter of 12".
|
| The English terms would be:
|
| 11:15 -> quarter after 11, quarter past 11 (both pretty
| rare, tbh)
|
| 11:30 -> half past 11 (this is the only form that is
| moderately common)
|
| 11:45 -> quarter of 12, quarter before 12 (also pretty
| rare)
| pessimizer wrote:
| And I'm pretty sure the Spanish matches (except in
| reverse, like Spanish usually is relative to English):
|
| 11:15 -> once y cuarto
|
| 11:30 -> once y media
|
| 11:45 -> doce menos cuarto
|
| edit: and about the subject of the thread, "por si" or
| "por si mismo." "per" afaik is a preposition like "por"
| that means to pair or match things: so it can mean by,
| through, around, with, for, and even times("x") i.e.
| doesn't mean anything in English.
|
| "si" is the 3rd person reflexive pronoun (when placed
| after the verb), and is probably similar to "se."
| ("mismo" is a redundant clarification is Spanish,
| probably because "si" and "si" are homonyms.)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| 100% agreed. Also, 11:45 -> quarter TO 12 (rare)
| dghf wrote:
| Tok Pisin, a.k.a. New Guinea Pidgin, has exactly two
| prepositions: _bilong,_ which means "of" or "from" in a
| possessive or attributive sense; and _long,_ which means
| everything else.
| dhosek wrote:
| I have to admit that I was a bit surprised when my ex-
| wife listed off Spanish prepositions to discover that it
| excludes a lot of words I would have thought were
| prepositions but Spanish considers adverbs and only
| become prepositional when used in conjunction with one of
| the enumerated prepositions, usually (always?) _de_.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _quarter of_
|
| Still can't beat stuff like "bi-weekly" which can mean
| "every two weeks" or "twice a week" or probably some
| other thing as well.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| As is often the case, Randall Munroe has already
| delivered: https://xkcd.com/1602/. Perhaps the joke in
| this context would be if it said "bi-weekly".
|
| "You should come to our Linguistics Club's bi-weekly
| meeting. Membership is open to anyone who can figure out
| how often we meet." (I mean, you have a 50-50 shot. I
| wonder if there's any personality insights one could
| learn from such a selection.)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| yeah. for years, there's "biennial" (every 2 years) vs
| "biannual" (twice in 1 year).
|
| no such luck w/ months or weeks.
|
| also your username is almost as salient to the topic as
| mine! ;)
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| If you translate it literally, "per" is closer to "for".
|
| If you don't translate it literally, I'd vote for "in
| itself". "In itself" (viewed in its essential qualities;
| considered separately from other things[0]) has a
| different meaning than "by itself" (alone/unaided). And
| to me it's clear that "per se" pretty much universally
| means the former.
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=in+itself
| grepLeigh wrote:
| A less literal translation like "essentially" or "in
| essence" is deployed by master Latin translators like
| Robert Fagles. I've even seen "in a vacuum" which does a
| better job at communicating the original intent than a
| string of cryptic prepositions.
| gweinberg wrote:
| Maybe word for word, but "per se" means "as such".
| walrus01 wrote:
| One of the primary reasons why AV1 exists is because HEVC is
| such a hot mess.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| There are already two patent pools for av1 that want rent.
| nabakin wrote:
| Do you think AOM is going to start charging royalties?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| No, Sisvel and Avanci are.
| nabakin wrote:
| How does that work? They force AOM to pay up and then I
| guess either AOM passes the royalty burden onto AV1 users
| or they take the hit and pay it themselves?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Patent pools want money from companies and end users.
| philistine wrote:
| That's incredible. With MP3 already completely patent-free as
| well, we have an extraordinary free set of audio and video
| codecs for the next couple of decade, at least until HEVC
| becomes free.
| yaomtc wrote:
| Let's not forget Opus. Not technically patent-free but it
| practically is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_for
| mat)#Patent_cla...
|
| Also Vorbis has always been patent free.
| a1o wrote:
| In the link it seems the last patent in US go as long as 2027?
|
| If the patents really expire in 2025, is there an already open
| source library written either in C or C++ one could use for
| reading h.264?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Cisco published their implementation under BSD license:
|
| https://github.com/cisco/openh264/
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| They also make a reproducible build of it for firefox in
| order to shield mozilla from patent suits.
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| x264 has been around forever, and it's FOSS.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| A tale as old as video codecs.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Now if only HEVC wasn 't such a hot patent / licensing
| mess._
|
| Somehow I suspect HEVC suddenly became a thing in the past few
| years precisely _because_ AVC patents are expiring.
| harshreality wrote:
| Encoding efficiency for a given perceptual quality is very
| important when you pay for bandwidth or disk space.
|
| Otherwise there would have been no effort to create vp9 and
| av1, as everyone on that side of the codec wars would've
| stuck with vp8.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Yes, and in fact this is explicitly the business model[0] of
| ISO MPEG and ITU VCEG. They pay for their basic research by
| letting participants patent and license the resulting
| standards-essential inventions[1].
|
| HEVC/H.265 has been in development since 2004, i.e. right
| after AVC/H.264 was published, and took almost a decade to
| actually be standardized. There's even an H.266, which
| started in 2017, a few years after H.265 was released. Though
| the primary concern of patent holders is not AVC patents
| expiring. Those patents actually aren't that valuable,
| because AVC is licensed _way too cheap_. MPEG-LA had
| negotiated a very generous free rate for online video[2], in
| response to MPEG-4 ASP (aka "DivX :-)") basically not
| getting much use online.
|
| What patent owners want is to go back to the days of MPEG-2
| where they were making money hand over fist just for owning a
| functional codec. They even sacked Leonardo Chiariglione,
| _the founder and head of ISO MPEG_ , because he was trying to
| change ISO's patent policy to be more favorable to developing
| royalty-free codecs.
|
| [0] ISO does not license patents and has no affiliation with
| MPEG-LA/Access Advance/etc, but Leonardo has gone on record
| saying this is their 'business model':
| https://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-
| solu...
|
| [1] under FRAND licensing
|
| [2] Which is why YouTube's allowed to use H.264 without
| paying $$$ for it. Before that, they used whatever codec was
| available in Flash Player. Adobe (and Macromedia before it)
| used On2 VP6 primarily because it had no patent licensing
| royalty; before that they'd used H.263.
| swyx wrote:
| handpicked selection of notables:
|
| - Frida Kahlo
|
| - Henri Matisse
|
| - Alan Turing
|
| i guess the Chrysler Building is public domain now? what can you
| do with a buidling?
| diggan wrote:
| > i guess the Chrysler Building is public domain now? what can
| you do with a buidling?
|
| I guess maybe the design of the building, if anything? If that
| will become public domain, expect it to appear in Macau in a
| year or less, and probably other places :)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Kind of a niche, but the open world Spiderman video games
| stopped including the Chrysler Building due to licensing issues
| after it was bought by new owners in ~2019
| shiroiushi wrote:
| You wouldn't download a building.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I would if I could ! but my 3D printer is a bit to small
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Also the writer Par Lagerkvist, nobel award winner
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| There was some crank that once C&D'd a minecraft server for
| reproducing copyrighted buildings. I dont think he had the guts
| to take it to court though.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y2IiZvg1xQ
| tas50 wrote:
| The building going into public domain is actually pretty sweet.
| Here in Portland we have this really cool looking statue in
| front of our city hall called the Portlandia statue (way before
| the show). You'd think it would be shown all over in pictures
| of our city, but the guy that made it owns the copyright and
| enforces the shit out of it. Because of that it's entirely
| unknown. No one wants to publish a picture and pay him. When
| that enters public down in a SUPER long time it will be easily
| published and folks might actually know it exists.
|
| https://www.wweek.com/archive/2024/03/24/why-the-portlandia-...
| flipthefrog wrote:
| The Eiffel Tower isnt copyrighted, obviously, but the 1985
| light design at night is, so you may need permission to use
| photos of it commercially
| timpark wrote:
| In May 1998, before the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
| went into effect, there was an amusing Tom the Dancing Bug comic
| regarding characters falling out of copyright.
| https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/1998/05/17
|
| In that vein, similar to the Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh
| horror movies that have been released in recent years, Popeye
| will be entering the public domain next year and people are
| working on a horror movie based on that.
| saghm wrote:
| Even as someone who isn't really into horror much as a genre,
| it's hard not to appreciate how one of the first instincts we
| have as a society when freeing some IP is "We should make a
| creepy version of this!".
| Swizec wrote:
| > it's hard not to appreciate how one of the first instincts
| we have as a society when freeing some IP is "We should make
| a creepy version of this!"
|
| Almost certainly rule 34 happens first and just gets less
| attention in public. There were "bear" posters of Pooh all
| over SOMA (in SF) almost immediately after the copyright
| ended.
| ben_w wrote:
| Rule 34 happens well before copyright expires.
|
| Clopfic, Kirk/Spock, or ask any pile of furries about Robin
| Hood or Nick Wilde.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| What is Soma? I see there is a video game
| (link)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(video_game)],
| but have no idea what it means in this context. Are you
| saying there is some kind of add-on for that?
| hollerith wrote:
| South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Ah, my bad. I think I saw that in one of the results but
| went off on some other route because I was focused on
| "horror" stuff. Thanks. :)
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| I am curious how the long tail and changing of media
| consumption habits has devalued many of these characters.
| Mickey is Mickey and there's an entire company built on it of
| course, but my kids have literally no clue who Popeye is. They
| have never seen a Popeye cartoon and probably never will. When
| I was younger we didn't have nearly as much choice (2-3
| channels with limited times for cartoons) - rather than Netflix
| or Youtube which effectively offers unlimited/fragmented
| options.
|
| Additionally the main plot line of Popeye is effectively Popeye
| protecting Olive Oil from being assaulted by Bluto - not
| exactly modern cartoon material.
| timpark wrote:
| I think some things were a product of their time, and weren't
| popular/profitable enough to keep marketing or update or
| modernize. (whether they didn't maintain peoples' attention,
| or had issues like the Popeye one you mentioned) Another not-
| as-popular character that's entering the public domain in
| 2026, for example, is Betty Boop.
|
| On the other hand, Superman and Batman enter the public
| domain in 2034 and 2035 respectively, so that should be
| interesting. Though like Mickey Mouse/Steamboat Willie, I
| expect that it's only the original version/costume that goes
| public domain.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| DC Comics has done a good job of keeping Superman relevant
| through time as well. 40s, 50s, 80s, etc. The whole Death
| of Superman was a big deal back in the early 90s also even
| though the cartoons I don't think were as popular. You are
| spot on in that Betty Boop and Popeye like you said are
| relics from their time and absolutely don't translate -
| although anyone around in the early 1990s will remember a
| brief Betty Boop merch resurgance.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I think practically a lot more things are in the public domain
| because they were distributed via the internet to certain
| countries that until recently had a much lower bar than the Berne
| Convention standard and entered the public domain there.
|
| Edit: or had at least one person make at least one copy there. If
| the law allowed everyone to make one copy for private use.
|
| Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding ?
|
| e.g. Ethiopia which only shifted to a quasi Berne standard midway
| through 2004.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It would still be infringing to bring a copy into some
| countries from Ethiopia. UK doesn't have fair use, for example.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yes, but on the internet someone in the UK can just get a
| connection to some server in Ethiopia hosting this vast
| treasure trove of works. So maybe not de jure, but probably
| de facto.
|
| Edit: And maybe it is de jure too for those on a ship on the
| high seas?
| gbear605 wrote:
| It depends on your purpose. If you're an American who wants to
| make movies for Americans, that are derivative of one of these
| works, this matters a lot.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| And if you're a filmmaker who intends to establish their
| business in Ethiopia...?
| Calavar wrote:
| Then you can establish your business in Ethiopia, but good
| luck selling it in the US!
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| That's not an issue for the filmmaker who sticks to
| online distribution, there are branches of well known
| payment processors in Addis Ababa.
|
| They won't be making blockbuster movies anytime soon, but
| I imagine their business would be greater than zero?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > That's not an issue for the filmmaker who sticks to
| online distribution, there are branches of well known
| payment processors in Addis Ababa.
|
| Yes it is once they distribute to people online outside
| of Ethiopia.
|
| And the payment providers will enforce that.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| No?
|
| Where did you come across this notion?
|
| Plenty of people in e.g. India, Brazil, etc., buy
| literally counterfeit goods, dvds, blurays, and so on,
| all the time, let alone transformed works.
|
| Often even with the exact packaging design of well known
| companies preserved on the counterfeit packaging.
|
| And the purchases are often made via well known global
| payment processors.
|
| Edit: At most a large fraction of potential US customers
| would be discouraged by the need to use a VPN for online
| streaming or by the risk of a physical disc getting
| seized. But that's still far from zero potential
| customers.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Something going into the public domain in one country doesn't
| mean that it automatically enters the public domain in every
| country. It may make it easier to find a free copy on the
| internet, but it is still often under copyright in other
| countries. The article is about works that are going into the
| public domain legally, not just practically.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| But they would be legally in the public domain for anyone in
| Ethiopia?
|
| Ethiopian citizens, residents, etc., can clearly own a copy
| for each work.
| cxr wrote:
| Unfortunately, public domain isn't everything. There are lots of
| works that we know of and that we should be able to share with
| one another, but it's hard to come by copies. To give one
| example:
|
| The novel Red Harvest from 1929 is listed as entering the public
| domain next month. But the thing is that prior to being published
| as a novel, it was serialized in Black Mask magazine, and since
| all installments were published pre-1929, they're all already in
| the public domain.
|
| The trouble, though, is that despite being public domain,
| actually getting your hands on these issues, whether in real life
| or figuratively as scans is something that poses a challenge--we
| simply don't have easy access to this material.
|
| And that goes for lots of other stuff that we know about but
| don't have copies at hand.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| If it's in the public domain, you can make legal derivative
| works even without the source material, can't you?
|
| Or can you?
| nemomarx wrote:
| If the serialized one is in the public domain and a book
| isn't, then your work might be seen as derivative of the book
| anyway.
|
| For instance the recent Wicked movie (and book, and play,
| etc) can't use ruby red slippers, because that was a detail
| only in the relativley more recent movie, so even though the
| original wizard of oz book has been in the public domain a
| while, some details are siloed off. I think the Holmes
| stories had disputes like this for a while too, where if you
| mentioned certain side characters it might infringe a more
| recent adaptation or etc.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I can see how having the public domain source material
| might be necessary to defend yourself against claims of
| infringement of the non-public domain works. That makes
| sense to me.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| The Holmes situation was even sillier than that: they were
| arguing that certain _personality traits_ of Sherlock were
| still under copyright:
| https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/conan-doyle-estate-sues-
| net...
| pessimizer wrote:
| What if you just want to read something without a credit
| card? In the far-off past, it was once normal to buy a book
| without your purchase registering in dozens of databases,
| being cross-referenced with your electricity bills and the
| people you went to high school with, then analyzed for your
| marketing or terrorist potential. You would go to a
| bookstore, hand them something called cash, they would give
| you a book, and your relationship would end.
|
| Now you can only do this through piracy.
|
| I'm honestly not worried about getting zoomer takes on Red
| Harvest. I'd like to be able to legally send it to somebody I
| recommend it to without involving hundreds, if not thousands,
| of other people.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Secondhand bookstores still exist. I've found first
| editions at them before, so that might not be a bad place
| to look, actually.
| d3VwsX wrote:
| Also all the sites that post scans of old books or magazines
| but claim various usage restrictions or/and copyrights on the
| scans.
|
| That effectively keeps public domain works copyrighted, for
| most purposes, for most of us. Most libraries for instance have
| some EULA that says you can only use scans you order from them
| for non-commercial purposes, even if they scan from a public
| domain book. I do not know if that can be enforced in general,
| but it would not be fun to have to find out in court.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| As far as copyright is concerned, "slavish reproductions" do
| not pass the threshold of originality https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Repro...
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| are there any precedents in this regard?
|
| > I do not know if that can be enforced in general, but it
| would not be fun to have to find out in court.
|
| does the above sentence refer to using EULA-restricted public
| domain works and asking volunteers to carry the risk of being
| sued? or does it refer to somehow challenging the
| enforceability in court?
|
| can it be illegal to merely insinuate EULA's as described
| above? which laws prohibit intimidation regarding copyright
| that is not held?
|
| can John Doe intimidate people with EULA's on public domain
| works?
| distantsounds wrote:
| I'd love to know! Too bad this website only gives a small
| selection of what those items are, despite the entire lists
| already being published elsewhere! Very useful, thanks Hacker
| News!
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| 70 years feels so long for movie or book.
|
| I get it's important to protect the right of authors and
| companies but damn it's 3 generations. Something my grand grand
| father may have seen, that's insane.
|
| 25 year, a single generation would make sense. I'd argue that by
| then all the money would have been made and you would allow new
| generation to grow up with the greatest art from previous
| generation, it would be like a virtuous circle. Next generation
| would improve based on previous one And so on.
| adamc wrote:
| I think that's too short. Lifetime of the author or a min. 50
| years would make sense to me. Mark Twain, for example, was
| worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's
| reasonable.
|
| The crazy long Disney thing, though, is what it is because of
| lobbying muscle.
| ronsor wrote:
| I think that's still too long when copyright was originally
| supposed to be a compromise between society and the author,
| not a indefinite guarantee for an author. I understand the
| concern of providing for family, but keep in mind that the
| average person works continuously to provide for their family
| and has to be responsible enough to save money. It is not
| society's responsibility to ensure that; and alternatively if
| it is to be society's responsibility, there are better
| mechanisms than copyright.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for
| surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable.
|
| I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to
| continue to make money after you are dead. Earn enough during
| your lifetime to provide for your surviving daughters, sure,
| but I don't like the idea of someone being able to
| posthumously put a gag on people's ability to express
| themselves just so that their kids can get a nice
| inheritance.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Perhaps not, but the point of copyright is to provide
| incentive for creating work. Since earning beyond the grave
| is an incentive, there's an argument to protect it (within
| limit).
|
| Another example is Grant's autobiography, which he wrote as
| he was dying of throat cancer. No way he would have done
| that without copyright.
| lolinder wrote:
| > No way he would have done that without copyright.
|
| Why not?
|
| For centuries people wrote books so that they would have
| a legacy and be remembered. They wrote because they felt
| it was the right thing to do, or because they wanted to
| control the narrative around their lives. Do you have any
| specific reason to believe that Grant wrote his
| autobiography to provide for his successors, rather than
| just _to have written it_?
|
| I understand the theory about incentivizing people to
| create, but honestly I'm not convinced that what we get
| from that deal is worth it. Too often it feels like
| extended copyright creates a similar set of incentives to
| advertising--sure, we get more works, but the best works
| would have been written even with a much shorter
| copyright because the author had something they wanted to
| say. The works that are being incentivized by long
| copyrights are the ones that we could do without.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| Grant wrote his autobiography pretty much entirely out of
| desperation to provide for his family after his death. He
| had lost everything he had in a Ponzi scheme and was
| heavily in debt as he was dying from cancer, and the
| autobiography was his last chance to make money for his
| family.
| lolinder wrote:
| I stand corrected.
|
| That said, at the time of Grant's writing copyright in
| the US was 28 years (with an optional extension for
| another 14 if the author lived long enough), which means
| that OP's proposal of 25 years would likely have been
| sufficient to motivate Grant.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Yes. This is the correct synthesis. Copyright is good for
| one generation and bad beyond that.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| > No way he would have done that without copyright.
|
| Was his creation of his autobiography primarily motivated
| by money? I would assume not.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| It actually was, he was almost entirely destitute when he
| died and the autobiography was his last desperate at
| providing for his family.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| I stand corrected. Thanks for sharing that info.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Both Clemens and Grant wrote when copyright was 28 years
| + optional 14 year extension.
|
| I'd much prefer that to the current life + 70 years or 95
| years after publication.
| bdangubic wrote:
| his daughters were in their mid to late 20's - wtf does he
| need to support them from his grave
| lolinder wrote:
| To be fair to him, this was an era where their ability to
| support themselves was limited--if not in practice at least
| by strong cultural stigma.
|
| The same cannot be said of most people today, and I
| therefore agree that it's a bad argument for long copyright
| terms in a modern context.
| modeless wrote:
| Authors can provide for their children the same way the rest
| of us do. With the money they made while they were working.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| All of us working in development of any kind create value
| well into the future with our work. The only question is
| whether you monetize immediately with wages or with
| ownership
| lolinder wrote:
| I agree, with the caveat that a literary work can be seen
| as an asset that has value which pays out over time. It
| takes a large investment upfront and then pays out slowly.
|
| So having a limited ability to pass on that asset if you
| die prematurely seems only fair--you'd have the same option
| if you were building something physical--but we shouldn't
| use inheritance as an argument for longer copyright. The
| question of how long someone should be allowed to earn
| money from a work should be orthogonal from the question of
| whether that right to earn money should be inheritable.
|
| This is the flaw in life plus 70--it assumes that copyright
| should last indefinitely during one's lifetime _and then_
| provide for successors. I 'd rather see a flat rate for how
| long we're comfortable locking up a work in copyright,
| successors or otherwise.
| modeless wrote:
| > It takes a large investment upfront and then pays out
| slowly
|
| Does it really? Sure, timeless classics pay out over a
| long period of time but they are by far the exception.
| I'll wager that the vast majority of copyrighted works
| make the vast majority of their money in the first
| decade. So why do we need essentially perpetual
| copyright? (Essentially perpetual because almost none of
| the works created in my lifetime will ever pass out of
| copyright before I die)
| lolinder wrote:
| > the vast majority of their money in the first decade.
| So why do we need essentially perpetual copyright?
|
| I agree. I think OP's proposal of a fixed term of 25
| years is more than reasonable. All I'm saying is that it
| should be inheritable and not based on when the author
| dies.
| adamc wrote:
| I don't see why written things can't be an asset while
| other creations can. It just discriminates against writers.
| modeless wrote:
| We have property rights for physical objects because
| physical objects are scarce. Only a limited number of
| people can use any given object and we need some way of
| deciding who gets to use it.
|
| On the other hand copies of writing are not scarce. We
| can give copies to everyone who wants one for practically
| free. Property rights for copies of writing are therefore
| artificial. Creating artificial scarcity where none
| exists has real costs that in many cases outweigh the
| benefits.
| Brybry wrote:
| The problem that I see is not the Mark Twains but the vast
| majority of other authors.
|
| Their works go out of print but they're still copyrighted so
| people can't legally reproduce them (for profit or
| otherwise).
|
| My grandfather was a published author with some success but
| he's dead and his stuff is no longer in print. No one in my
| family is going to see revenue from his work. No one outside
| of his generation (when he was successful) will ever have a
| chance to read his books as they're impossible to find now.
|
| Most books written in the 20th century are basically gone
| from public availability.[1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/th
| e-m...
|
| [2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Wo
| rks...
| xienze wrote:
| > No one outside of his generation (when he was successful)
| will ever have a chance to read his books as they're
| impossible to find now.
|
| Does the family not have rights to those works? A copy of
| the books? Scan them and release them copyright free if you
| want the world to see them.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Drug parents are only 10 - 20 years, and it works great. The
| creator gets to make enough money to finance their next drug,
| and the public gets cheaper generics after a decade or two.
|
| There's no reason any other IP should be longer.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Agreed. I think lifetime of the author, or moderate fixed
| term in the case of untimely death or corporate copyright, is
| perfectly reasonable. 10-20 years is way too short, it does
| not give enough consideration to the author's rights.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for
| surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable.
|
| Why is that reasonable? Why should someone's daughters get a
| free ride instead of having to work for a living like
| everyone else?
| poulpy123 wrote:
| Are you in favor of forbidding inheritance to everyone or
| just for authors ?
| ronsor wrote:
| I'm going to designate this as the obligatory "copyright is far
| too long" subthread.
|
| In my opinion, the ideal length (if we are to have copyright)
| is between 10 and 15 years, at least if a work is already
| monetarily successful. If a work has yet to be monetarily
| successful, then we can allow up to 25 years for it in
| particular.
| modeless wrote:
| Has anyone done a study on when copyrighted works make their
| money? I'm guessing that the vast majority of the income is
| made in the first decade after creation. Timeless classics
| are by far the exception. And for those, does it really
| benefit society for their fortunate authors to sit back and
| get rich resting on their laurels? The creation that
| copyright was supposed to incentivize already happened. At
| that point society benefits when works go into the public
| domain so derivatives can flourish.
| ronsor wrote:
| > does it really benefit society for their fortunate
| authors to sit back and get rich resting on their laurels?
|
| In my opinion, it doesn't. In creative and entertainment
| industries, the idea of practically indefinite royalties
| has been normalized, but no other industries has this*. For
| example, it would be strange to continue paying a
| construction company after your home has been built.
|
| *As far as I can remember. I'm open to correction here.
| lionkor wrote:
| any subscription service that doesn't deliver new value
| each day or month, like the Adobe suite(s)
| ronsor wrote:
| In the case of Adobe, you're paying for continuous
| updates and their added cloud services (or other
| functionality which requires their servers). Also Adobe's
| subscription pricing (per-month) is significantly less
| than the retail cost for a one-time purchase of their
| software without future updates.
|
| Meanwhile one does not pay for continuous updates to a
| particular novel or a movie. Even if they do pay for new
| installments in a series, they do so separately.
| drdeca wrote:
| > Also Adobe's subscription pricing (per-month) is
| significantly less than the retail cost for a one-time
| purchase of their software without future updates.
|
| And the per-second pricing is even less!
| bluGill wrote:
| Adobe presumably also fixes bugs, so hopefully you are
| getting something better over time. I've in the past wore
| out a favorite book and since it was in print bought a
| new copy - and found the same typos that were in the
| previous copy.
| benj111 wrote:
| I'm sure thats what they say you're paying for.
|
| I suspect you're just paying a monopoly tax.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I don't understand the analogy. We don't continue to pay
| authors after we buy their book. We do pay construction
| companies again if we want a second house - even if the
| design is the same.
|
| Probably floorplans would be a closer comparison - and I
| believe they are licensed IP?
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >We do pay construction companies again if we want a
| second house - even if the design is the same.
|
| You might pay the construction company again for the
| identical 2nd house, but you're not going to pay the
| _architect_ again.
| Juliate wrote:
| Depends. If the 2nd house location requires review by an
| architect because of ground issues or regulation. If
| contractual provisions require an architect fee. If small
| adjustments that may have structural impacts are needed.
| You won't pay the same amount, but still something.
| eesmith wrote:
| Why not? The US, for example, recognizes a copyright in
| architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_
| architecture_in_t...
| tmtvl wrote:
| I believe the analogy is as follows:
|
| Imagine that you've paid the construction company after
| it finished building your house. You then go and live in
| it. One year later you get an invoice because you're
| living in the house they built.
|
| That's what doesn't happen and what (I think) GP means
| with indefinite royalties: the person who owns the house
| has to keep paying the company which built the house.
|
| The problem with that analogy is of course that royalties
| are based off profits, but there are ways to consider a
| home to have its own sense of profit (like the Belgian
| legal term 'cadastral income':
|
| > _Cadastral income is not an actual income. It is a
| notional value that we determine for an immovable
| property (building or land). This corresponds to the
| average annual net rental income you would receive in
| 1975 for your leased out property._
|
| ).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| not only that, is that the analogy includes a surprise
| invoice. Royalties are contract law.
|
| A closer analogy would be rent. Why do we allow a builder
| to collect rent a year after building a house.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > We don't continue to pay authors after we buy their
| book.
|
| Libraries certainly do in basically every country in the
| world apart from the US.
| benj111 wrote:
| I'd go slightly further.
|
| A rich author can retire, and not write any more books.
| From an encouraging creativity POV, copyright length
| should be set at about the amount of time it takes to
| create a followup.
|
| But, as open source software, and most authors and
| musicians demonstrate. People will create without any
| financial incentive.
|
| So ultimately copyright is there to allow an industry
| that can actually find and distribute these works.
|
| For the record, I'm not suggesting that creators should
| be decently rewarded for their works.
| paxys wrote:
| That isn't the right analogy.
|
| To start, royalties have nothing to do with copyright.
| They are simply an agreement between an author and a
| publisher. I give you the exclusive right to publish my
| book, and I get a cut of every sale.
|
| Royalties extend far beyond creative fields. Any deal
| where someone gets a percentage share of the sale of a
| product or service on an ongoing basis is a "royalty".
| E.g. in manufacturing or even software.
| fwip wrote:
| Some people would say that the fortunate authors have
| already benefitted society, and that the potential of
| winning this lottery ticket was part of their incentive to
| do so. We could equally ask "does it benefit society to
| enrich tech founders with billion-dollar acquisitions?"
|
| That said, I believe the security of UBI to be a stronger
| enabler for creativity than gambling you'll write the next
| great American novel in-between shifts at the fish cannery.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My guess is that authors have relatively long-term returns
| on their books, while movies are known to generally make
| almost all their money in the first year.
| Juliate wrote:
| Generally yes, significant revenue (for books but also
| movies and music) may happen several years after the
| first release/publication. Because... reasons you don't
| always control.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > while movies are known to generally make almost all
| their money in the first year.
|
| That hasn't been true for fifteen years.
| mcosta wrote:
| After the DVD and TV licenses, what are the sources of
| income? Toys?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| streaming. Netflix has 40B in annual revenue, and is just
| one player among many.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Streaming revenue has no public attribution of fees to
| specific content, as far as I can tell. It is very much
| possible that a large fraction of that revenue is driven
| by (and attributed to) new content, the same way DVD
| sales were.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure I understand your point. I thought the
| question is where movie studios derive their profit.
|
| I dont think any streaming service would be viable with a
| catalog of only original productions <1 year old.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes, that is the question to which neither of us has an
| answer. Streaming deals happen as bundles, and my
| understanding is the opposite of yours: the old stuff
| gets thrown in as a piece of the bundle to help make the
| catalog bigger, while new content actually sells
| subscriptions. In other words, the back catalog has some
| marginal value to the streaming service (and the studio),
| but it's the new releases that actually sell
| subscriptions.
|
| Releases of "The Mandalorian" got people subscribing to
| Disney+, and new seasons of "Game of Thrones" had the
| same effect for HBO, for example.
|
| In other words, a bundle of 100 movies for $10 million
| could be attributed as "$100k per movie," but that's
| almost certainly wrong. More likely, that bundle is a
| combination of something like $5 million for one movie,
| $1 million for a few others, $100k for a bigger set, and
| all the way down to $1000 or less for the remainder of
| the catalog.
| benj111 wrote:
| I'd say less than 5 years.
|
| I'm not sure its even the relevant question.
|
| What length of time does a film studio, or book publisher
| look at for payback?
|
| If everyones calculating their return on the first 12
| months, setting copyright to 12 months obviously isn't
| going to impact any industry investment decisions.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I mean if everyone agree but a few big companies, how is it
| possible that it has not yet been changed by politicians.
|
| I'm not saying specifically USA but also Europe, I can't see
| common people fighting over the right of author to hold
| intellectual properties for 70 years.
|
| Haven't been trials to shorten it somewhere, either USA or
| any other developed countries where it's actually enforced ?
| ronsor wrote:
| There are a few reasons why copyright terms aren't
| shortened:
|
| * International treaties make it difficult without buy-in
| from everyone, or at least the most important countries.
| The USA is probably the only country that could afford to
| unilaterally make such a change.
|
| * Politicians are largely beholden to big companies now.
|
| * The average person is distracted with other societal
| woes, and politicians and companies work hard to keep it
| that way.
|
| * Some people have been convinced that excessive copyright
| is a moral good through propaganda.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I'm not sure where I stand on this, but is it possible
| that some people have been convinced that copyright is a
| moral evil by propaganda? I pause when I hear this line
| of argument, "I'm a free thinker and I have objective
| truth. Others are weak minded victims of propaganda."
| ronsor wrote:
| Of course. There's all kinds of propaganda (and depending
| on where you stand, some propaganda is good and other
| propaganda is bad), and not one person is immune. But for
| the sake of this discussion, there are some extra factors
| to consider:
|
| * Those promoting copyright expansion or the status quo
| have significant amounts of money; those criticizing it
| mostly do not (counting groups with real principles,
| anyway)
|
| * It is suspicious for people who have no personal
| interest in extended copyright to excessively favor it.
| lmm wrote:
| The benefits of a shorter term are diffuse. The benefits of
| a longer term are concentrated. This is a case where
| representative democracy often breaks down - policy A would
| be better for almost everyone, but not by enough for them
| to switch their vote on, whereas policy B is better by
| enough for a few people to make them single-issue voters.
| So we get policy B.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Single issue /donors/
| plopz wrote:
| The only part that feels weird about a shorter duration like
| that is tv/movie adaptations of books. The game of thrones
| show came out 15 years after the first book, does that mean
| they would have been able to make it without licensing it
| from the author?
| echelon wrote:
| This is a remarkably salient point.
|
| It can take a long time for certain works to find their
| wings or true market potential, especially books and music.
|
| Some examples of music: "Take On Me", "Running Up That
| Hill", "Bohemian Rhapsody", or even bands, like Neutral
| Milk Hotel
| jhbadger wrote:
| You may have a point with a cult band like Neutral Milk
| Hotel, but songs like Take On Me and Running Up That Hill
| were incredibly popular when they were new -- it's just
| that both got a second wave of popularity decades later
| when they were used on soundtracks of films/shows.
| echelon wrote:
| > Running Up That Hill were incredibly popular when they
| were new
|
| It was far more popular in the recent revival!
| ronsor wrote:
| It does mean that, and I think that's just something that
| would have to be accepted. Disney's empire is built on
| adaptations of public domain stories, after all.
| echelon wrote:
| Disney is about to be faced with a landscape where
| anybody can make Pixar films from home. They're in for a
| world of hurt in the new regime where thought moves
| faster than IP.
|
| Film studios only existed because (1) distribution used
| to be hard and (2) films were financially and
| logistically difficult to make. Netflix and YouTube
| slayed the first challenge, and now GenAI will fell the
| latter and give indie directors the same kind of platform
| that indie game and indie music folks currently have:
| true one person studios.
| fwip wrote:
| Unlikely. Generative AI is foul and unpleasant to
| perceive.
| ronsor wrote:
| It is not inherently, but people are very effective at
| using it to produce foul, unpleasant output, which is a
| temporary problem. Like almost all things, people will
| not actually care how they're made if the final product
| is good.
| echelon wrote:
| As someone who spends 100 hours a week working in this
| space, it's so weird seeing such pervasive negative
| attitudes everywhere I look.
|
| I know the work I'm doing is valuable and that this field
| is the future. I'm sure it'll click for more folks soon.
| ronsor wrote:
| People repeat "generative AI is all evil garbage" because
| that's what the media (which is very afraid of AI, might
| I add) has told them.
|
| It's also funny to see AI turn people who normally
| dislike copyright into die-hard copyright lovers.
| fwip wrote:
| I didn't say that? It is foul and unpleasant to behold,
| based on my experience of viewing it repeatedly over the
| last 5+ years.
|
| It would be nice if you didn't assume that anybody who
| doesn't share your opinion is mindlessly regurgitating
| slop.
| ronsor wrote:
| I was speaking in response to most of the general
| "pervasive negative attitudes" mentioned, not you
| specifically. Although I'm curious where you viewed
| generative AI content repeatedly 5 years ago; it was
| effectively non-existent outside research circles then.
| fwip wrote:
| If I recall correctly, that was about the time that
| Google started demoing its generative AI "deepmind" - a
| particular demo of a frog comes to mind. The commonality
| of AI content has certainly increased since then, I
| didn't mean to imply it was commonplace back then.
| sakjur wrote:
| People might care for culture. I'm very much in favor of
| a reformed copyright that strengthens indie artists,
| conservationists, and remixers and weakens Disney et al.
|
| It's also a matter of fact that we have the copyright we
| have that's prohibitive to people and favors
| corporations. It's upsetting to see how a bunch of
| Silicon Valley companies stomps right across those lines
| with impunity, while people like Aaron Swartz are
| persecuted and threatened with decade long prison
| sentences for crimes that in my mind ought to be much
| less upsetting.
|
| If copyright was fair, training of AI intended for non-
| personal use ought to be a sufficient commercial activity
| to require a license. That would stiffle the development
| of AI, which is what I'd argue happens to human creators
| under our current system.
|
| If we had a 25 year copyright, we could easily make
| useful AI trained on the sum of human creation until
| 1999, _and_ have badass human made remixes of 80s and 90s
| songs -- we wouldn't have to do legal gymnastics to allow
| the development of useful AI, as it'd have access to
| quite substantial training material from the 1900s, and
| unlock relatively modern training material year-by-year.
|
| So yes, I dislike AI for infringing on copyright and I
| dislike copyright (in its current state).
| vundercind wrote:
| So far, it's really bad at actually replacing human labor
| in pro-social ways while being a supercharger for various
| antisocial jobs, like scam artist or astroturfer. The
| main "beneficial" use for it today is replacing wasteful
| labor that probably didn't need to be done in the first
| place--which is why an AI version is fine, because it
| didn't matter to begin with.
|
| My wife and I both work in the field, I on the tech side,
| her on the creative side, and she's been in it since the
| earliest days of industry trying to adapt these tools.
| There's a lot (like, holy shit, _so_ much) of effort and
| money going into it, but so far it 's only marginally
| helpful for non-evil jobs.
| jorvi wrote:
| To me the magic is in generating things that would have
| had too much right issues or would not have been
| economically viable.
|
| A series that is a variant of the stories of "The Wire",
| but taking place in the Harry Potter universe? Coming
| right up.
|
| Obscure prog rock band from the 90s put out one album?
| Now its two.
|
| I can understand people their apprehension, feeling like
| art is losing something essential without the human touch
| behind it, but I saw an article a few days ago where
| people thought generated Shakespeare was better than
| actual Shakespeare. Until it was revealed which was
| generated.
|
| If AI can generate me another, better Illmatic, I'm all
| here for it.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The conclusion to draw there is that Shakespeare honestly
| doesn't make for very good reading today unless you are
| also delving into the historical context or considering
| the major impact of his works on humanity's culture from
| the arts to language. LLM generated output has none of
| that.
|
| 'Ah ha! LLMs are better than Shakespeare!' is a
| meaningless statement.
|
| Besides, no one reads Shakespeare for pleasure; there is
| no need to generate more. ;)
| vundercind wrote:
| I bet you could get a random person off the street to
| fairly-consistently pick (curated) AI works over an
| amalgamated top-5 of great jazz recordings selected by
| jazz super-fans.
|
| > Besides, no one reads Shakespeare for pleasure
|
| Exactly (kind of). Lots of rewarding works take _effort_
| to learn to appreciate, for a bunch of reasons that may
| include (as in Shakespeare 's case) that they're old and
| their context and vernacular is not ours. Lots of people
| (I'd say a large majority, in my experience) dismiss
| entire genres and forms of art that they weren't heavily
| exposed to as children, often going so far as to judge
| them _bad_ , simply because it would take some time and
| effort to learn how to enjoy them and to be able to
| discern what's good or remarkable about a given work.
|
| What proportion of the population has ever in their lives
| enjoyed the experience of reading a Shakespeare play?
| Even once? It's gotta be tiny. Of course you can get them
| to choose AI junk over Shakespeare, it's not a _kind of
| thing_ they understood or enjoyed to begin with, in most
| cases.
| slyall wrote:
| There seems to be some people who really hate Generative
| AI and will call it out and complain wherever they see
| it.
|
| eg somebody uses it to illustrate an article there will
| always be somebody who complains.
|
| So anything that enough people see will generate at least
| one complaint.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| The thing is GenAI will be just like CGI. When it is bad
| it will look bad and has 'that look'. But when it is good
| enough you will not even know.
|
| The creativity has already gone sideways for most of
| this. I can with a few simple sentences create an
| acceptable picture (in some cases a short film). With a
| AI pipeline I can make some pretty cool scenes. Instead
| of having to know how to properly draw an s curve with a
| nice gradient bit of layered colors over it and 14
| meticulously created layers. I tell the program to do it
| for me. It does an acceptable job in a fraction of the
| time. People can complain all they want but the rest of
| us are already using these tools and will continue to do
| so until something better comes along.
| happymellon wrote:
| > I know the work I'm doing is valuable and that this
| field is the future. I'm sure it'll click for more folks
| soon.
|
| Maybe because not everyone shares your opinion? Having an
| LLM generate art isn't necessarily a net benefit for
| society. Computers were supposed to improve our lives but
| instead of robots to perform dangerous menial work it's
| taking the creativity out of humanity.
|
| Hey guys you no longer have to do fun things, tech bros
| have that covered. Now get back down the mine.
| fwip wrote:
| Most of the people who seem to be fans of AI-generated
| art are fans of AI, not of art.
|
| Maybe it'll get to the point where it's good enough to
| have on as background television - not everything needs
| to be great, after all - but what's the point of that? We
| already have far more high-quality television shows and
| movies than most people can ever watch.
| underlipton wrote:
| Disagree. I've seen things done with generative AI which
| I've wanted to see visualized for decades, but which were
| too difficult and time-consuming to do traditionally.
| I've also seen beautiful things that were either
| impossible to produce or impossible to even conceive of
| through traditional workflows.
|
| Those make up an infinitesimally small portion of the
| total output, which is largely a deluge of crap,
| certainly. But, generally, rarity makes something more
| valuable and beautiful by comparison.
| bbddg wrote:
| Care to share your examples?
| zuminator wrote:
| That was also true of quite a lot of early CGI, but most
| people would say that things have improved. I think we're
| on the cusp of rapid improvement in AI video as well, in
| part spurred on by skilled people using the tools we
| currently have.
|
| I came across the following recently. I think a casual
| viewer would assume it was just Bakshi-style rotoscoped
| animation without a major AI component.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9BG6yBkOIE
| fwip wrote:
| An interesting example. It may be because I consider
| myself a fan of animation (moreso than the average
| person), but the video has obvious garbage less than
| fifteen seconds in, with the spaceships (?) morphing and
| sludging around the pyramid.
| zuminator wrote:
| Sure, that's why I said casual viewer and not careful
| viewer. But getting back to your original point, would
| you say it was foul and unpleasant? That's really what
| I'm claiming, that we're fairly quickly advancing beyond
| the old days of those nightmare Nekobuses and vomit-
| inducing clips of Will Smith devouring spaghetti, and
| into territory where at least some people can find the
| product genuinely enjoyable. Of course nothing will ever
| be perfect. AI aside, after all these years it's still
| often jarring when computer physics is shoehorned into
| cartoons/anime that's designed to look like traditional
| hand drawn animation.
| vel0city wrote:
| > would you say it was foul and unpleasant?
|
| If I were to watch 90+ minutes of that with dubbed voices
| on top of it, absolutely. There's practically zero
| cohesion between any of those shots. No real action, no
| real narrative. It's a collection of non-cohesive stills
| that were stretched, not any bit of a story at all.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted. This is one of the most
| objectively true things said here. CGI was pretty crappy
| for at least the first few decades of its existence. Even
| aspects of the animation in _Toy Story_ really show that
| film 's age. I remember realizing that in the early
| 2000's. Most people either forgot or didn't even
| experience the early days of CGI and would consider much
| of it to be nightmare fuel today.
|
| AI is pretty clearly advancing orders of magnitude faster
| than CGI has. Just because it sucks now doesn't mean it's
| going to suck in another 5 years.
| lukan wrote:
| "Just because it sucks now doesn't mean it's going to
| suck in another 5 years."
|
| We will see. Some flaws might be baked in, like LLM's
| halucinating. That won't go away, unless we invent a new
| tech. So here with generating videos, will morphing
| objects for example ever go away? I am sceptical with the
| current approach.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| My constructive criticism to this video is "90% of it is
| figures standing still while wind blows their outfit or
| the camera does a simple move." Sometimes moving their
| lips as though talking .. though I did like that bird
| turning it's head smoothly away like "forget this, I'mma
| preen! Peace out!" Haha
|
| Very much no throughline of concepts from one shot to the
| next. You never see the same character twice. No
| foreground dynamic action.. not even simple walking
| except one far-away character directly away from the
| camera which means that their silhouette hardly changed.
|
| This all comes from the current generation of video
| diffusion models that basically just generate an image
| like they always have except with a hint of temporal
| coherence they expand that into a short shot with no
| types of movement except those seen a million times in
| their training set.
|
| Getting gen models to be able to reason better about
| motion and to build mental world models of the 3d scene
| they are managing a 2d window into is going to be a big
| challenge, and require some additional breakthroughs on a
| par with the original GPT and stable diffusion
| breakthroughs that currently act as a foundation to a
| majority of modern AI innovation.
| roenxi wrote:
| > ... and require some additional breakthroughs on a par
| with the original GPT and stable diffusion breakthroughs
| ...
|
| You say this like Stable Diffusion isn't a 2022
| technology. And not early 2022, but quite late (August).
| ChatGPT is younger.
|
| I mean sure we need more breakthroughs, but we've barely
| even seen a new hardware generation since those things
| came out and the researchers are really only getting
| started with the new capabilities of generative tech. If
| we don't get more breakthroughs in short order then that
| would be a stunning halt of progress, a breaking stop the
| likes of which we have almost never before seen. More
| breakthroughs are a given.
| mlindner wrote:
| Agreed. Everyone raves about generative AI but I've yet
| to see a single generative AI video that is "enjoyable"
| to watch in a way beyond the way tech demos are enjoyable
| to watch.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Hm, also at 10 years out how likely is the author to be
| able to convince someone to do a TV adaptation, knowing
| that by the time they're done someone else will be able to
| release their own versions (sans royalty even)?
| ronsor wrote:
| Many things are only popular for a relatively short
| period of time. If someone wants to wait until the
| copyright period is over to do an adaptation, the source
| material may no longer be that popular, and the
| adaptation, even without having paid a single royalty,
| will be unprofitable.
| longdustytrail wrote:
| Ok but you're gonna have a hard time convincing me that
| (morally) HBO should have been able to make game of
| thrones without cutting a check to the guy who created it
| ronsor wrote:
| I'm not saying it'd be good for HBO to do that, only that
| they could. Regardless of whether or not they should,
| edge cases like GoT's success should not control the
| outcome for everyone and everything else.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| GoT isn't an edge case - it's actually quite quick for an
| adaptation.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The reality is that almost no adaptations happen until
| ten years after a book is published. Virtually never.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Apparently the TV series Game of Thrones cost just under
| $600m to produce[1], and George R. R. Martin earnt
| something like $100m from royalties as its original
| author[2]. Although access to the author for advice and
| publicity must be valuable, that is nonetheless a very
| large proportion of the profits that I'm sure many
| studios would rather not have to share!
|
| [1]: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/100996
|
| [2]:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6182197
| gosub100 wrote:
| > does that mean they would have been able to make it
| without licensing it from the author?
|
| yes and it's possible someone could have done it even
| better, had they not been required to convince investors to
| purchase copyright. GoT was a masterpiece, don't get me
| wrong, but it's a fallacy to think it couldn't have been
| better, or that other book adaptations could have been as
| good or better, without copyright being in the way.
|
| It's a minor issue in the grand scheme, but my pet peeve is
| with "synch licenses" (not sure if that's even the right
| term), but where sitcoms can't go to home video because of
| stupid disputes about shitty songs that happened to be
| included. Did anyone watch "Married With Children"
| _because_ of Frank Sinatra 's song "Love and Marriage" in
| the intro? It's a catchy song, and I'm sure it lured people
| in who might have otherwise changed the channel, so yes it
| has value. But it should only be a tiny fraction of the
| royalties for a full performance of the song. doubly so for
| home video releases. Would _anyone_ buy even 1 season of
| MWC _just_ to hear the Sinatra song? I say no. And
| therefore should not be required to pay any royalties.
|
| I am watching "Murphy Brown" reruns from pirateflix because
| apparently it never went to home video because of license
| disputes about the 60's soul songs in the intro. They add
| character to the show, for sure. But they're not why I
| watch the show. I watch it for the story and the acting. In
| this case, actors (who worked extremely hard over 10
| seasons of that show!) are being wrongfully deprived of
| royalties because record execs can't be reasonable about
| how much 10 seconds of a 60 -year-old song is worth.
| plopz wrote:
| Yeah, thats a big problem with shows that work really
| well with the music, like Scrubs. I'm glad we have piracy
| to be able to keep the original works with the intended
| tracks intact.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| That can be fixed by limiting copyright to a certain
| duration _per medium_. You write a book - you have
| copyright on paper based books for 15 years. You publish it
| as Ebooks for desktop and mobile devices - get 15 years on
| that medium. Convert to visuals on Television &/or Films -
| 15 years on that medium. Virtual reality - another 15 years
| and so on ...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Are you suggesting that if you release only a book,
| anyone could take the story and produce a film based on
| it, because you didn't publish a film?
| thisislife2 wrote:
| No. I am suggesting that _short_ copyright terms should
| be tied to the medium of delivery.
|
| If someone writes a book, copyright will begin when they
| publish the book and the 10-15 years copyright expiration
| would only be applicable for paper book medium. After the
| copyright for the paper book medium expires, anybody can
| republish it. But, only the original copyright owner can
| "recreate" the work again in another medium - like Games,
| TV/ Films, Virtual reality etc. Even if that happens
| after the expiration of copyright on the first medium it
| originally appeared on.
|
| With the Game of Thrones example, with short copyrights,
| Martin would lose the copyright on the books (the first
| original medium it was published on) in 10-15 years. But
| he would retain the copyright on his work for other
| medium. So if 20 years down the lane, HBO wanted to
| recreate his work for TV, they would still have to get
| his permissions to do so. Once Martin's gives HBO the
| rights to his work for TV, HBO would own it only for the
| 10-15 years, and after that, anybody could use it freely
| too, but only for paper book and TV medium. This means if
| Meta or Apple want to recreate Game of Thrones as a
| virtual reality show, they would again have to approach
| Martin to get his permission. If they do, then they own
| the copyright to his work, on virtual reality medium,
| till it expires in 10-15 years.
|
| In this kind of system, the original author would
| continue to retain the future rights for any new future
| medium of delivery too.
| tmtvl wrote:
| What would happen then if someone wants to make a movie
| about a book published a few centuries earlier? Would
| they have to do deep archaeology to find the heirs of the
| author, the heirs of the heirs, the heirs of the heirs of
| the heirs,... and then get permission of the hundred-odd
| heir^Nths?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| European patents have an interesting fee structure that
| increases exponentially (IIRC doubling every ~3 years), with
| a 20 year limit. I think this (plus mandatory registration if
| you want to enforce) is a great solution to copyrights, too,
| even if you let it run unbounded. If the registration fee is
| $1000, a registration 30 years later is $1000000 and if you
| want 60 years you have to pay $1000000000 over the life of
| the copyright.
|
| Any excess revenue could, theoretically, be redistribute as
| grants for the arts.
| devsda wrote:
| I think it should be proportionate (& increasing
| exponentially) to the revenue(not profit because hollywood
| accounting).
|
| Big coporations like Disney can hold on to the material and
| pay the sum with profits from other ip if it's fixed.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I completely disagree. The previous comment's idea is
| better: just charge fees. The government shouldn't be
| worried about exactly how profitable something is,
| because you can argue that too many ways (see Hollywood
| accounting). It's too easy for large corporations to
| invent "creative accounting" tricks, and just basing
| things on revenue penalizes any company that invests
| larger amounts of money in ventures that have lower
| profit margins (e.g. doing high-quality movie production
| with physical models, on-location shooting, etc. instead
| of just using some crappy AI to generate everything).
|
| With exponentially increasing fees, the copyright holder
| can decide for themselves if it's economically worthwhile
| to pay the renewal fees or release it into the public
| domain. If the cost to extend copyright another 5 years
| after 50+ years is $1B, for instance, very few copyright
| holders will bother with that unless it's a highly
| profitable property.
| wtallis wrote:
| The problem with "just charge fees" is that it wastes an
| excellent opportunity to make the copyright system more
| useful for individual authors and artists, and instead
| strengthens the status quo with even more incentives to
| consolidate copyright powers under mega-corporations.
| Long before the fees got high enough to incentivize a
| corporation to abandon a work's copyright to the public
| domain, they would force authors to sell out to a
| corporation in return for a share of future earnings,
| rather than accept an immediate loss of all royalties.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Presumably you could set up "just charge fees" to have a
| grace period of 3-5 years to register your copyright (and
| pay any back fees) if you happen to want to enforce the
| copyright after that time.
|
| It's also possible that you could set up a smaller fee
| for a news article, etc.
|
| There are lots of implementation details that make "just
| charge fees" work.
| benj111 wrote:
| Back fees?
|
| So I use a 4 year old work, that I assume is public
| domain, and then the creator, pays his back fees and sues
| me?
|
| alternatively, a creator creates a work, gets 5 years of
| protection, and never pays the fees that he owes.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes, exactly that model. In practice, you would treat
| that 4-year-old work as "under copyright" the same way
| everything written is under copyright today. This sort of
| thing gives you a chance to market your creative work
| with protection and avoid paying fees until you know that
| it is valuable. That would then allow the fees to be
| relatively high since only people with valuable IP would
| pay.
|
| The alternative is that everyone's blog enters the public
| domain immediately upon writing unless they want to pay
| $XXX per article, which also seems wrong to me.
| deprecative wrote:
| Return ownership of IP to humans only. You'll solve
| basically all of the issues currently faced that way.
| michaelt wrote:
| How would that apply in the case of, say, Peter Jackson's
| 2003, $281 million "The Lord of the Rings" film series?
|
| Does Jackson own the IP? Do actors own part of the IP for
| every scene they're in? What does Jackson offer to
| investors, to get the backing he needs to hire loads of
| horse riders or whatever? Do we do it Star Citizen style,
| giving Jackson a few hundred million upfront with no
| obligation to deliver anything?
| tanewishly wrote:
| You make an excellent point. Companies could eg. have
| 25yrs to make a profit.
|
| On the other hand: if an artist produces something that
| slumbers in anonymity for decades before it suddenly
| explodes into popularity and becomes part of the cultural
| canon, then I'd want the artist to reap whatever benefits
| possible. That is: if anyone is making big bucks off of
| that, it first and foremost should be the artist, for as
| long as they're alive.
| benj111 wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I'm against long term copyright, because things become
| part of the 'cultural canon'
|
| Why should I pay George Lucas because I want to say "use
| the force luke"*
|
| 'Cultural Canon' shouldn't be owned by anyone, because
| it, by definition belongs to everyone.
|
| *Yes I know thats a misquote.
| benj111 wrote:
| I fail to understand the problem.
|
| Assuming some nominal or zero starting fee. The author
| can choose to sell his rights at the beginning, or can
| choose to keep the rights.
|
| If x years later, the renewal comes up and isn't worth
| it, then he doesn't have to pay it. the value to the
| author isn't worth the value to the public. If a mega
| corp comes along and buys it, they have taken on a risk
| that it will be worth more in the future, and the author
| has gained some extra income.
|
| If the mega corp think its worth buying the rights,
| theres probably a good business case for the property, so
| the author should be able to get the money somehow. If
| not, the mega corp is giving the author a nice bonus.
| andrepd wrote:
| > The government shouldn't be worried about exactly how
| profitable something is, because you can argue that too
| many ways (see Hollywood accounting). It's too easy for
| large corporations to invent "creative accounting" tricks
|
| This is also the _core_ reason why tax systems should be
| simplified simplified simplified.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Why complicate things and allow for even more creative
| accounting? Elevating flat fees give you a term that is
| inversely proportional to revenue. With flat exponential
| fees, term is logarithmic in revenue.
| toast0 wrote:
| Assuming fee based renewal, proportionate to revenue is
| problematic for works that fall out of publishing.
|
| There's lots of works from when I was young that nobody
| is interested in publishing, even though I would like to
| see them again. They make zero revenue now (and probably
| didn't make much before), so I suspect the rights holders
| would abandon them if they had to pay any fee, especially
| an escalating fee.
|
| I'm personally less worried about works that remain in
| print.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Couldn't you print it yourself? If it's that obscure and
| that important to you to own a hard copy.
| bluGill wrote:
| Print them how? Am I supposed to type up all the pages of
| that falling apart book - book scanning helps but still
| requires extensive effort? What about the page that got
| ripped out and is missing, how do I recreate that?
|
| While it is likely legal for me to go through all that
| effort for myself, it isn't legal for me to share the
| fruits of my effort with someone else who wants a copy so
| they need to do it themself. Even if they have a worn out
| copy themself it isn't clear that I can print them a new
| copy. If I want to share this work with someone else who
| might want it I'm stuck - I can only do the above for
| personal use.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > I suspect the rights holders would abandon them if they
| had to pay any fee
|
| Wouldn't that just put the works in the public domain,
| allowing others to legally publish the works? What would
| be the downside?
| toast0 wrote:
| Yes, that's the upside. That's why people want a
| meaningful fee.
|
| If it's revenue based and there's no revenue, then the
| rightsholder will renew to protect their options.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Big coporations like Disney can hold on to the material
| and pay the sum with profits from other ip if it's fixed.
|
| I think that's okay, Disney has lots of money but they
| aren't stupid, i.e. they won't spend money unless they
| expect a return on investment.
|
| What you really want to prevent are orphan works which
| are copyrighted but no one can get a copy of.
| silvestrov wrote:
| European Patent Office fee list:
| https://my.epoline.org/epoline-
| portal/classic/epoline.Schedu...
|
| has 4 pages of prices
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Looks like I was wrong about which patent office I'm
| thinking of, thanks for posting.
|
| Seems like it's the US that has doubling fees, doubling
| every 4 years.
| liontwist wrote:
| What it sounds like you're saying is "this stuff is too old
| to be interesting" which is kind of the point.
| ronsor wrote:
| The point of copyright is to promote the creation of new
| works. It has nothing to do with the popularity of the work
| under copyright or after entering the public domain. Mickey
| Mouse was still relevant at the time of entering the public
| domain, ninety-five lobbied years later.
| deprecative wrote:
| To add it's only Steamboat Willie Mickey that is public
| domain. The actual character as we think of him isn't.
| The creator has been dead for nearly 80 years. It's
| absolutely insane that any of those creations are still
| privately owned.
| liontwist wrote:
| Yep. But if it still commands economic value for its
| creator and you cut that off, then it is reducing that
| incentive to create and cultivate in the first place.
| benfortuna wrote:
| If this was the case would we have enough interesting content
| (movies, music, etc.) to reduce demand for streaming
| services, etc.?
|
| I think those indirect impacts probably incentivize more
| lobby groups to keep the status quo.
| anilgulecha wrote:
| The original copyright law
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne) got it right
| IMO: 14 years.
| Animats wrote:
| All the TRIPS agreement requires is 50 years. That can be
| from first publication, regardless of when the author dies.
|
| The US should go with 50 years from first publication. It
| doesn't have significant financial effect for rights holders.
| Revenue on content over 50 years old is tiny. Maybe if you're
| still alive, the sole author, and own the rights yourself,
| you could apply for an extension for the rest of your life.
| But no more than that.
|
| Someone with Trumpworld connections could push this, as a way
| of getting back at Hollywood.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > All the TRIPS agreement requires is 50 years. That can be
| from first publication, regardless of when the author dies.
|
| TRIPS requires fifty years for features, but not for
| various bits of copyright that go into making a feature,
| where it requires life + 50. There are vanishingly small
| amounts of films that would be genuinely clear under the
| TRIPS terms, they'd basically just be performing arts
| pieces with no script or planning or music.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I'd go with something like the Sony Spiderman deal.
|
| Unless they release new IP with that character every X years,
| the rights revert back go Marvel (Now Disney).
|
| Same with books. If you have an ongoing series for 20 years,
| the first books shouldn't enter public domain.
|
| But a book series or TV show with no new content for 15+
| years? Public domain.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| That gets really murky really fast.
|
| Is _10 Cloverfield Lane_ a sequel to _Cloverfield_? They
| decided to throw the Cloverfield name onto it shortly
| before release for marketing reasons, the actual movie has
| nothing to do with the events and story of the original
| _Cloverfield_.
|
| Is the video game _Nier_ a sequel to _Drakengard_?
| Technically yes, but the connection is vague and distant.
| And there 's also _Drakengard 2_ which is the sequel to a
| different ending for the original game.
|
| How would you count _Fear the Walking Dead_ , the spin-off
| series of _The Walking Dead_ , itself and adaptation of a
| comic book series. Do the shows continue to get copyright
| protection so long as the comics are still being published?
| Or vice versa?
| vundercind wrote:
| It should definitely be short enough for creatives to engage
| directly with their influences from childhood and adolescence
| in middle age, and to take on and use the earlier works of
| their contemporaries in their later years.
|
| So, probably not more than twenty years. Fifteen would be
| better.
| benj111 wrote:
| Surely the point of copyright is to allow a person to have
| sole rights to commercialise a thing before it goes to the
| public domain.
|
| If so, if they havent done that in the first 10/15 years, why
| should they get an extra 10/15 years?
|
| Further, another issue of very long copyrights is preserving
| things you don't really have a right to preserve.
|
| that successful videogame may still be around in 25 years.
| the one that wasn't so popular has much less chance of
| surviving.
|
| And then you have the added complication of what was
| successful? a fixed term means you know when something is in
| the public domain.
|
| personally, I think there should be registration and fees
| attached. if you want copyright protection for the first 5
| years, pay a nominal fee. if you want more than that, pay
| exponentially more for each year.
|
| If companies want to pay that tax, they can. if it isn't
| worth it, then it can go in the public domain.
|
| Either way, at least you have a register of what is in, and
| out of copyright.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The length should be no more than would be required to maximize
| the creation of works and not a moment longer.
|
| Long terms prevent the creation of derivative works which at an
| extreme could be reducing the number of works created as well
| as disincentivizing creators from creating new works if they've
| been especially successful early in their careers and decided
| to coast.
| thrance wrote:
| Then I'd say the ideal length is probably zero. I don't buy
| that derivative works negatively impact revenue that much.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Derivative works aren't really the primary problem
| copyright law was created to address. In the early days of
| novel publishing, it wasn't uncommon for a popular book an
| author had sold to a publisher on a royalty basis to just
| be reprinted by other publishers who kept all the money for
| themselves. It wasn't unheard of for the _majority_ of an
| author 's books to be published by people who weren't
| giving _any_ money to them until the law stepped in.
|
| I think people have a tendency to focus on corporations and
| super-successful individual creators as the primary
| beneficiaries of copyright, and I get it, but George R.R.
| Martin should not be your yardstick: the long tail applies
| here. A _lot_ of authors have books that might keep
| bringing in a thousand dollars or less a year in royalties
| over a couple decades; if those authors are able to put out
| a book a year, that "back catalogue" might end up being
| most of their writing income. And the rise of ebooks has
| probably created _more_ authors in that boat, not less.
|
| The original US copyright act in 1790 set the term at 14
| years, with a near-automatic extension of another 14 years
| granted upon request. I'd be happy enough going back to
| that, but I don't think I'd want to see less, honestly.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| There's also absolutely zero sense that if there's any term
| based on the lifetime of the authors, that it should extend a
| single day after their death.
|
| I'd definitely prefer a 20-30 year fixed term, but if it was
| going to be based on lifetime then it should only be until the
| death of the author.
| devsda wrote:
| The problem with that is some ridiculous edge cases.
|
| Young book author agrees to a profit share agreement with
| publisher and works most of the time.
|
| Has an accidental death at launch party, his work is in
| public domain now, and the publisher & author's family are in
| trouble ?
|
| Or it simply makes publishers reluctant to work with old
| authors and be biased towards healthy young writers.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes that's why it shouldn't have any bearing at all on
| lifetime, and why I prefer a fixed term of 20-30 years.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't have particularly strong feelings on this
| particular issue, but I do take issue with worrying about
| edge cases. By definition, edge cases are infrequent and
| unlikely occurrences. Trying to account for every
| possibility is a way of making sure nothing ever changes.
| It's a form of perfect being the enemy of good.
|
| For this particular scenario, I would tell publishers and
| authors to take out a life or accidental death insurance
| policy.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I disagree entirely in that I believe government shouldn't
| determine this but rather the market. The rights to an
| intellectual property should be transferable/sold in perpetuity
| and at some point the work will become less and less valuable
| as newer works outcompete for attention. This will differ
| depending on how great the work was as judged by the market but
| it's still the commanding force.
|
| Any particular time for transfer from market control to public
| domain is arbitrary. If it's worth anything it should be
| traceable not stolen. Everything will eventually have too
| little demand to be defensible and control will be let go and
| at that point it becomes public domain because it became public
| domain.
| panja wrote:
| If you want the market to determine then why do you need IP
| at all? That's just government intervention...
| nemo44x wrote:
| The government exists to protect the property of its
| citizens. You can't have a reliable market without the
| threat of violence (prison, fines, etc) and judiciary from
| an authority and government is suitable for that purpose.
| It's their main purpose in fact.
| globular-toast wrote:
| So no copyright then? How would "the market" prevent
| publishers freeloading the works of authors? Suggest you look
| up why copyright was invented (and all the other thousands of
| ways simplistic markets don't work the way we'd like them
| to).
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm saying copyright in perpetuity enforced by the
| government with the threat of fines or prison for stealing
| a copyright holders property. From there the market can
| take over as it's now free to operate without fears of
| piracy etc.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The most important factor should be that if something isn't
| commercially available (not used, new), it should fall to
| Public Domain faster.
|
| If you're not selling your game published in 2005, it should be
| free for everyone to grab - you clearly don't care about it
| anymore. If you did, you'd let people pay money for it.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 'd argue that by then all the money would have been made_
|
| Not by a long shot. They're still milking famous books, movies,
| songs, from 50 years back and more.
|
| But I'd argue that by 25 years all the money being made for the
| original owners should have been forced to stop. Similar as
| with patents.
|
| Once concern is when a creator isn't making money (e.g. from a
| book), and the work takes off after the 25 years (say, it
| becomes viral).
| ElectricalTears wrote:
| We'd just end up with Seinfeld and Friends reruns on every
| channel.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Just for argument, if we set the limit at 25 years. The
| Fellowship of the Ring, published 29 July 1954, would have
| been out of copyright by 1981.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring)
|
| I would say that the bulk of the (for lack of a better term)
| fandom, occurred after the 1980. Frodo
| Lives!(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Lives!)
| notwithstanding.
|
| I would also argue that corporations would have no qualms of
| waiting 25 years to capitalize and format shift a work of
| art, where as the 50 year term limit makes it more difficult
| for them to play off of nostalgia alone.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Where are you getting 70 years from? In the UK etc it's
| lifetime _plus_ 70 years. These will be works whose authors
| died before my retired father was born.
|
| It says authored 1929 for the US which seems to indicate 95
| years? I've lost track of how long these ridiculous lengths are
| now.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| For works produced by a company's employees and owned by the
| (immortal) company, its 95 years. For works produced by a
| mortal human it's that author's life + 70 years.
|
| That's how it is in the US and most of Europe.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| While I agree with you, I'm struggling to find a good argument
| why intellectual property should be treated differently from
| physical property
| andrewclunn wrote:
| "Hey, I like that table, I'm going to commission somebody to
| build one for myself!"
|
| Totally legal. No loss to first individual. The fact is that
| intellectual property IS treated differently, and was
| justified as being required to incentivize invention and
| creation NOT because there was any natural right to the
| product of one's thoughts to not be copied or expanded upon.
| Now that it arguably gets in the way of innovation and
| creation, what justification is there for these ADDITIONAL
| legal restrictions.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _NOT because there was any natural right to the product
| of one 's thoughts to not be copied or expanded upon_
|
| grandma not sharing her best recipes, and children calling
| each other "copycat!" is an argument for a natural right.
| It is innately how humans feel, and there is a supporting
| argument that we don't want grandma's secret innovations
| dying with her, to incent sharing.
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| > While I agree with you, I'm struggling to find a good
| argument why intellectual property should be treated
| differently from physical property
|
| 1) First reason, it is not physical property.
|
| 2) Second, many of the creators who lobbied for longer
| copyright terms benefited from a rich public domain when they
| did not have anything. In the case of Walt Disney, he made a
| film series based on Alice in Wonderland, which never had
| copyright protection in the US, and it's copyright expired in
| the UK in 1907.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney#Early_career:_1920.
| ..
| a57721 wrote:
| Disney also used "Le Sacre du printemps" in "Fantasia"
| after meeting Stravinsky, who was offended by the idea.
| However, Disney informed him that he would use it anyway
| since it was not protected in the US. Stravinsky was paid
| pennies.
| oneplane wrote:
| Reasoning about it from the perspective of something
| physical, one could argue that intellectual property doesn't
| exist at all, and we should only consider the books, movie
| media etc. to be property.
|
| If we were to take the contents of a book or a movie for
| example, and copy it, you still have the physical source, and
| nothing is lost, your property is still yours. It's just that
| there is more of it due to the additional copy. That copy
| isn't yours, and from the moment it was created it still
| isn't yours. So in that line of thinking, the property that
| was created is not the same as the property it was copied
| from, which means two different properties exist.
|
| We can make this even trickier, because if we were to reason
| about the physical property and the intellectual property
| separately, the story in a book, and the physical book itself
| would be two different properties. So when you create a copy,
| that book that started out blank was definitely not part of
| the property of someone else. So does the act of adding
| intellectual property now suddenly transfer the physical
| property to the source of the intellectual property?
|
| In the current laws and practises around the world we have
| made all sorts of rules about this, but just reasoning about
| it before falling back on established practice already shows
| that it doesn't always turn out to be as easy as it seems.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| _next generation would improve based on previous one_
|
| hopefully, ideally
| m3kw9 wrote:
| How do people typically make money from these new things
| tzs wrote:
| As is usual there is quite a bit of discussion here on copyright
| reform, which is mostly just suggestions to change the term of
| copyright.
|
| I think it would be interesting to consider other reforms.
|
| Note that copyright is not just a single right. It is a bundle of
| rights. In the US those are the copying right, the derivative
| work right, the distribution right, the performance right, the
| display right, and some others. The bundle of rights might be
| different in other jurisdictions but in most it is similar. In
| the rest of this comment I'll only be consideringd US copyright.
|
| First, I don't see why all of those rights should all have the
| same term. I see no reason to believe that the optimal term for
| say the copying right and the optimal term for the derivative
| work right would be the same.
|
| Second, how about adding more compulsory licenses? US copyright
| law already has some compulsory licenses (also called mechanical
| licenses), such as for cover songs. Briefly, a federal agency
| called the Copyright Royalty Board sets the terms and rates for
| these licenses, and anyone can obtain the license according to
| those rates and terms, regardless of whether or not the copyright
| owner wants to license the work to them.
|
| For example suppose we made it so that the copying and
| distribution rights have a three phase lifetime instead of the
| current two phases (which are an exclusive phase tied to the
| author's lifetime followed by public domain). The three phase
| lifetime could be (1) an exclusive phase of a fixed number of
| years, followed by (2) a compulsory license phase, followed by
| (3) public domain.
|
| The derivative work right is the hard one. On the one hand a
| short term allows others to play in an author's universe. I've
| seen some really good and really well written fan fiction that is
| not currently technically legal, especially crossover fan fiction
| that merges the story universes of different authors. Encouraging
| this would be good.
|
| On the other hand some things would be ruined if they became
| public domain too quickly. I'm quite pleased that Bill Watterson
| still gets to decide who can make "Calvin & Hobbes" derivative
| works. If copyright was only 14 or 21 years (terms people often
| suggest), I've no doubt that every character from "Calvin &
| Hobbes" would have started appearing in ads as soon as the
| copyright expired.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| Previous civilizations were able to own their cultural myths.
| Modern civilization's cultural myths are controlled by giant
| faceless corporations with legions of lawyers. No one can tell a
| new story about Han, Luke, and Leia without permission from the
| House of Mouse.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I agree that the way things were along time ago was more
| natural and definitely more creative. Things today though are
| way different though. A huge difference is that media wasn't an
| industry back then. Most people couldn't even read. The
| retelling of myths would mostly happen in the form of poetry or
| drama performed publicly, and the performance schedule was
| tightly controlled in the form of contests and festivals to
| honor various things across the calendar. There's not really
| analogue to that now. We are truly in uncharted territory, and
| that was the case since the printing press. Throw in the
| invention of the internet and it's a giant mess. I'm optimistic
| though that we can resolve it and pave a way forward.
| Retric wrote:
| Storytelling was both a profession and an industry in
| antiquity. Just as rock concerts and bar bands exist today,
| amphitheaters weren't the only way people would watch
| performances.
| immibis wrote:
| Or a Tor onion service.
| narski wrote:
| At least in the case of the Maya, literacy was carefully
| guarded so that a small class of priests could exercise
| precisely this kind of control. In fact, this is believed to be
| one of the reasons why modern Mayan languages are written in
| the Latin alphabet, even though there's a complete Mayan script
| that was the most developed writing system in the Americas
| until the conquest.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In previous civilizations, it was not uncommon to be killed,
| disemboweled, or crucified for telling myth.
|
| I dont think that distant kings, state religions, or crusading
| armies were more faceless.
| criddell wrote:
| > No one can tell a new story about Han, Luke, and Leia without
| permission from the House of Mouse.
|
| Disney is surprisingly friendly to Star Wars fan fiction.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/movies/star-wars-fan-film...
| sigio wrote:
| Until they are not... it's still permission, instead of
| 'always allowed'. I'm quite convinced they will not like it
| if you make a star-wars themed porn-parody (with the
| character names as-is) and try marketing it ;)
| jvan wrote:
| Lucas was friendly towards fan works, so Disney kind of got
| that situation handed to them and were smart enough not to go
| against it. When nerds are your core audience, you have to
| accept them doing nerd things. WB took down the Hunt for
| Gollum fan film and ended up reversing course. Would Disney
| and WB still make a ton of money if they tighten the reins?
| Probably, but why risk it?
| cyost wrote:
| Here you go, 9360 new stories about Han, Luke, and Leia:
| https://archiveofourown.org/works?commit=Sort+and+Filter&wor...
| ronsor wrote:
| This is copyright infringement and may be nuked by the Walt
| Disney Company at any moment.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I still can't believe that everyone alive in the 21st century
| has been damned to forego a vibrant public domain because some
| lawyers were afraid Mickey Mouse might fall out of copyright.
|
| Free Culture by Larry Lessig was an excellent book on the
| subject. He fought the copyright extension in the Supreme Court
| and founded the Creative Commons. The experience showed him the
| degree to which money has corrupted the US political system, so
| he moved his expertise from intellectual property to election
| reform. He was briefly a protest candidate for president, who
| vowed to make his reforms and then resign.
| nottorp wrote:
| Most are still books in that list. But there is no readable
| version of it, just photos :)
|
| Next year it will be a link to a tiktok movie?
| hoseja wrote:
| Oh hey look Crowley.
|
| It's fascinating to me that like 95% of what anglos see as
| "occult" or "magic" is directly descended from that very recent
| grifter.
|
| Also see vampires and Stoker (though that's not as intentional).
| retrac wrote:
| Thanks to the retroactive extension here in Canada, nothing.
| gnulinux wrote:
| In the US, a random/personal selection of major works that will
| be public domain are:
|
| * Ernest Hemingway's novel "A Farewell to Arms"
|
| * Ludwig Wittgenstein's essay "Some Remarks on Logical Form"
|
| * The first part of the 14th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica
|
| * William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury"
|
| * Rene Magritte's painting "The Treachery of Images"
|
| * Wassily Kandinsky's painting "Upward"
|
| * "Un chien Andalou", directed by Luis Bunuel and cowritten by
| Salvador Dali
|
| * "The Cocoanuts", the first film of the Marx Brothers
|
| * the first "Silly Symphony" cartoons, including "The Skeleton
| Dance".
|
| Not a bad year at all!
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