What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

Center for the Study of the Public Domain ^ | December 2013 | CSPD

[zeugma]

Every 20 years, Disney purchases a new extension to copyright law to make sure nothing they've produced ever enters the public domain even though they have made extensive use of it in their own works, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and continuing through just about every major feature length cartoon Disney has produced.

The public at large has been the miggest loser in all this, because so little works have been allowed to enter the public domain over the last century. A great example of this is one of Rudyard Kipling's works, The Jungle Book. Disney released a cartoon verson of The Jungle Book in 1967, one year after the work reverted to the Public Domain. They've made millions of dollars of this book. If copyright law that exists today had prevailed at the time, and Disney had wanted to similarly avoid paying royalties to the author, they wouldn't have been to make it until 2006 (i.e., 70 years after Kipling died in 1936.) They've since gone on to make 2 other "Jungle Book" productions are are rumored to be working on a third. Of these, the first three were all made before the copyright would have expired if copyright law that exists today had existed prior to their production.

Now, copyright is one of the few things actually provided for in the Constitution,

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; "

As with just about everything else our Feral government does these days, it can't seem to find limits to its power when its corporate masters come calling with piles of cash to stuff in congresscritter's pockets. I find it hard to believe that the word "limited" was ever intended to mean anything even close to the essentially perpetual copyright we have today.

Those interested in the subject might want to check out "The Incredible Shrinking Public Domain" at the same site of the above article.

[VanDeKoik]

Just another glorious result of not following the Constitution.

“The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries....”

LIMITED =/= Forever + a few more years just to be sure.

[P-Marlowe]

What Congress did was entirely constutional. Extending Copyrights helps to secure and promote both arts and Science.

If you want free books and movies, check them out from the library.

You can also get these book and movies for next to nothing at thrift shops and used book stores.

Only liberals want everything for free.

[buridan]

Just at the time public domain works could have been made freely accessible on the web, Congress makes them inaccessible. One of the worst policy decisions of recent times.

[zeugma]

Did you even read my comment, or have you actually tracked down any of Shakespeare’s decendents to make sure they got paid for that copy of King Lear you read in high school?

[MrEdd]

Copyrights and trademarks are not secured by fees coming anywhere near the costs of enforcing them.

Fees need to be every seven years and adjusted for inflation.

I am sure you agree that the intellectual property holders need to actually pay for what they get. Regular fee assessment pretty much solves the orphan works problem as well.

[Jim Noble]

That Hollings and Berman were not indicted, tried, and convicted of bribery tells you all you need to know about how things work.

[P-Marlowe]

It is up to Congress to determine the limited period of time in which to extend patent and copy rights. They have done so. The works of artists are property rights which are part of the estate of the copyright holder. These rights can and should be part of the inheritance of the families of the creators just as the homes you paid for with your own sweat and tears.

I have no inherent right to the fruits of another man’s labor. If Congress has chosen to protect the property rights of authors as part of their estates, then that is just fine with me.

Normally Congress tries to take away the property rights of its Citizens. Here is a case where they have given additional protection to those rights.

The liberals are all sad because they want everything to be free. It’s not fair!!!

Boo freaking Hoo.

[P-Marlowe]

Do you think that all property rights that are secured by our government should be secured by paying fees every few years in order to continue to own that property?

Based on your logic everyone should have to pay fees in order to continue to own the things that they worked for or paid for with their own money. In other words, if you don’t pay a fee to secure your Gibson Guitar, then anyone who sees it should be free to steal it.

[VanDeKoik]

Free is not the point.

It is to prevent the cluster we now have where everything is so copyrighted that you cant write a short story and publish it without some idiot citing something they wrote back in the 70s as grounds to sue you.

Like what art or science is being promoted by a work from the 50s still being protected?

[Gene Eric]

Agreed.

[MrEdd]

Abstract ones, absolutely.
Because it is not securing a physical object.

It is a limited time prohibition on someone else duplicating something.
Something that may in fact be irretrievably lost if care is not made to preserve it.

Are you seriously not capable of comprehending that there is a critical difference between the two? Or that preserving things is as important as perpetual profit.

There is a balance that should be maintained.
Hostility to that balance is why most of A. A. Milne’s plays are forever lost.

[zeugma]

You obviously do not understand the concept of copyright or its history.

Should we be required to pay the descendants of Francis Scott Key every time the National Anthem is played at a ballpark, or Shakesphere's descendants whenever Othello is performed?

The public domain is a common repository of our culture. It was never intended to become a perpetual state of affairs for any work, hence the "limited times" provisio in the Constitution.

From the referenced link.

• When Congress passed the first copyright law in 1790, the copyright term lasted for 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14 years if the copyright holder was still living. Before 1978, the copyright term was still 28 years from the date of publication, renewable once for another 28 years — but 85% of copyrights were not renewed and went immediately into the public domain. Under the 1976 Copyright Act, which went into effect in 1978, the term became 50 years from the date of the author’s death (with no need to renew to have the full term). And in 1998, the copyright term was increased to 70 years after the death of the author, and to 95 years after publication for corporate “works-for-hire”, locking up an entire generation of works for an additional 20 years. With these and interim extensions, the copyright term has been extended eleven times in the past fifty years.
• The 1998 term extension — which increased the copyright term to life plus 70 years and 95 years for corporate authors — was not only granted to future works. It was retroactively applied to works that had already been created and enjoyed their full copyright term, and were set to enter the public domain. None of these works will enter the public domain until 2019. The already diminished public domain has been frozen in time.
• In addition to extending the copyright term, recent laws eliminated the requirement that authors “opt in” to copyright protection by affixing a basic copyright notice — the word “copyright” or © with a name and year next to it. This change took effect in 1989, and copyright now adheres the moment a work is fixed, whether or not the author wants to protect or sell the work, with no easy way to "opt out" — think of all the amateur videos, travel photos, blog postings, witty musings, jam sessions, or useful tidbits that people want to freely share and don’t intend to commercialize. Estimates are that under the opt-in system perhaps only 10% of works included a copyright notice; the remaining 90% went immediately into the public domain. Compare that to today, when 100% of works automatically have life plus 70 years or 95 years of protection and are off limits to artists, educators, archivists, remixers, scholars, and everyone else who might want to freely use them. As a result, the chart above only shows part of the story — the shrinking of the public domain has been exponential.

Copyright is a necessary evil that we use to make sure that creators can be compensated by their work, but it was never envisioned to be as far reaching as it has become. The current terms and conditions actually reduce the mount of material that can be called upon from our cultural heritage in the creation of new works. Should Disney have had to pay Kiplings great, great grandchildren for the right to produce their Jungle Book cartoon, as I mentioned in my original post?

All the current assanine state of the law does today is encourage people to disregard it. Personally, I have no problem with passing along a copy of Dark Side of the Moon to a friend because the underlying Constitutional foundation of the law has been far exceeded by its current reach and breadth. Just like I'm not willing to obey a law that says my handgun can hold no more than seven rounds, I'm not willing to support the protection given to 40+ year old music.

If the state wants us to respect the law, they need to start respecting us as well. Copyright law is a compromise established because we want people to encourage the arts and science. The public domain is the rightful place for all works, because one may not call back words and ideas once spoken.  As a society, we've decided to grant a time of exclusive control to authors and others because it benefits society as a whole to have such grants exist. However, corporate interests have purchased terms that have impoverished the public domain, leaving us with orphan works with no clear legal guidelines to determine the status of a work.

Contrary to your assertions, it's not about just wanting everything for free. Most  of us who oppose the current copyright regime simply demand something that fulfills its stated Constitutional purpose.

 

[zeugma]

Something that may in fact be irretrievably lost if care is not made to preserve it.

Indeed. Good point. Doctor Who fans bemoan the fact that many early episodes have been lost because the BBC, in their short-sightedness reused the videotape they'd been filmed on.

You can bet that none of the new episodes will be lost regardless of what the BBC does or does not do.

[Valpal1]

Well said. People gripe about the intellectual desert of current books, movies and art. Excessive copyright length is one of the main contributors to the impoverishment of the public domain.

[zeugma]

Since  we're talking about copyright and the public domain, this is a great place to plug one of my favorite websites:

Project Gutenberg.  From their welcome page blurb:

• Project Gutenberg offers over 42,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

  We carry high quality ebooks: All our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers.

There is a sister site, Project Gutenberg Austrailia that has some advantages over the original PG site. Austrailia's copyright laws are much more sane than those in the U.S., so they are able to publish some books that are in the public domain there that are still considered to be under copyright here. I recently downloaded and read through the entire Lensman series by E.E.Smith. That's some seriously classic SF.

[RoadGumby]

And yet that is also true. Property Tax. Both for RealEstate as well as everyday property.

[GunRunner]

Can you expand on the Milne example?

[djwright]

Why didn’t they also extend patents. A patent is 1000x harder to get than a copy write and only lasts 17 years no matter what.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone wanting to learn guitar could choose form some song written after the civil war?

You can’t set up your estate in a way that is guaranteed to provide for your heirs for 70 years after your death, why does the author of “happy birthday” get to but you don’t?

A four legged cow
A big old sow
My mind is cheese
pass the ketchup please
(c)
I just copy writed that and published it. No one can use it for 70 years after my death. Seems fair doesn’t it?

[P-Marlowe]

Something that may in fact be irretrievably lost if care is not made to preserve it.

And the best way to preserve it is to maintain a vested property right to the creator or his heirs or assigns.

Just because something expires into the public domain is no guarantee that it will be lost to future generations. But if the succeeding generation has a profitable reason to preserve something it is more likely to be preserved.

In what way have you been deprived of your Liberty because someone still has a copyright on The Cat in the Hat?