[HN Gopher] Public Domain Day 2026
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       Public Domain Day 2026
        
       Author : rolph
       Score  : 102 points
       Date   : 2025-12-27 22:15 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (web.law.duke.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (web.law.duke.edu)
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _What will enter the public domain in 2026?_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46117112
        
       | snvzz wrote:
       | Imagine how much better the world would be if the copyright term
       | was shorter and/or if past a certain point, registration (and
       | payment of fee) was needed to renew copyright and use the full
       | term.
        
         | aqme28 wrote:
         | "Or" would be terrible. Every work that's particularly
         | interesting would just be kept in copyright forever by the
         | estate or corporate overlords.
        
           | kec wrote:
           | Not if total duration was limited to some small number of re-
           | ups (or the fee ramped up at some greater than linear rate)
        
         | 63 wrote:
         | Imagine all the incredible fan works that could spark careers
         | and businesses if e.g. the original star wars trilogy were
         | public domain, or how many indie dev studios could get started
         | by riffing on pokemon. But alas, fans of both franchises
         | continue to make works but can't profit from them and need to
         | pray that Disney and Nintendo won't send lawyers after them if
         | they get popular
        
           | pennomi wrote:
           | Fan works of Star Wars have long been as good or better than
           | the official releases. The world would be a much richer place
           | if anyone was free to create whatever they wanted.
        
         | whycome wrote:
         | Who would the fee go to? Copyright should be for the consumer.
         | I should be able to modify the works of my own lifetime.
        
           | herewulf wrote:
           | Imagine simply owning your digital music, video, and game
           | purchases in your own lifetime.
        
             | falcor84 wrote:
             | I've been imagining even just having legal access to the
             | Spotify (or similar) API to legally stream music, so I
             | could pay the rights holders without having to deal with
             | these annoying interfaces. Can I not have that? I'm even
             | willing to use an sdk with a drm blob if I have to.
        
               | mjevans wrote:
               | DRM is on my no list. I want my operating system to
               | respect my freedoms and privacy.
               | 
               | I'm barely willing to tolerate Steam's default DRM a
               | little. Those are 'just games' and that particular
               | version doesn't try very hard, plus the rest of the
               | package (network effect, servers, and a strongly customer
               | friendly brand) combine to balance out the negatives. I'm
               | generally hopeful that as things become classic Steam
               | will either continue to maintain the access servers or
               | release versions that work properly without them.
               | 
               | For static media, just give me a reasonable way to pay a
               | reasonable fee for the use license and place to get an
               | unencumbered official high fidelity copy to enjoy.
               | 
               | Paraphrased: 'Copyright infringement indicates a customer
               | service failure.' At least with respect to anyone who'd
               | have considered the purchase in the first place.
        
       | herewulf wrote:
       | In an equitable world, LLMs would only provide answers from
       | <=1930 data (as of 1 January).
       | 
       | Yet another argument for copyright being far too long.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | Well, there's a massive amount of public domain and creative
         | commons content being released all the time; we don't need to
         | wait for copyrighted works.
        
         | 2ICofafireteam wrote:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46319826
        
       | tzury wrote:
       | I suggest looking at the https://publicdomainreview.org/ for a
       | more comprehensive listings,
       | 
       | and this one for books:
       | 
       | https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-28 23:01 UTC)