[HN Gopher] January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 192... ___________________________________________________________________ January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all Author : CharlesW Score : 201 points Date : 2022-12-20 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (web.law.duke.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (web.law.duke.edu) | santiagobasulto wrote: | Excuse my ignorance: does this mean that anybody can "legally" | (for example) torrent-download Metropolis? Or that can be a | "free" Netflix-alternative created today with movies that are | part of the public domain? | londons_explore wrote: | Broadly, yes. | | But there are details you'd want to ask a lawyer about. Things | like if you rip one of those movies from a DVD, and that DVD | was made more recently, you have to be careful not to include | any creative work done more recently - for example an adjusted | end credits sequence, coloring, restoration work, or minor re- | editing. | chr-s wrote: | You'll often find these old silent movies with a more | recently recorded soundtrack which may still be under | copyright. | | For truly free film, I believe you'd need to scan a print of | the film. I'd be interested to know of any efforts to obtain | and host truly free archival copies of these old films. | roflc0ptic wrote: | yes, you can now legally torrent metropolis. You can also make | derivative works (e.g. you personally could make Metropolis 2: | The Reckoning!) without fear of consequence. | niij wrote: | yes | | From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain : | | > Because those rights have expired, anyone can legally use or | reference those works without permission. | kmeisthax wrote: | Yes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Internet Archive | already has torrents of public domain film. | | There's also Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks for public | domain books. Wikimedia Commons has a huge archive of public | domain images and sound recordings. | jonah-archive wrote: | We're having a contest to remix public domain material that | will be judged at our in-person Public Domain Day party on | January 20th! Check it out: | http://blog.archive.org/2022/11/30/public-domain- | day-2023-re... | nightpool wrote: | Yes and yes (in fact, there are already plenty of websites you | can find out there that do that--many of them seem to just be | ads-filled scraper sites hotlinking / embedding from | archive.org) | 33955985 wrote: | Copyright should be life of the author/s full stop. | chihuahua wrote: | But then we'd get sob stories about how this condemns Walt | Disney's great-great-grandchildren to starving in the street. | ALittleLight wrote: | It's absolutely shameful that public domain has been pushed so | far back. I say make it ten years max. | not2b wrote: | The Berne Convention (an international agreement) requires at | least 50 years of protection, and the US signed it. But 50 is a | lot less than 95. | mod50ack wrote: | 50 years of protection after the death of the author. | twiddling wrote: | If AI is the author then what? | adgjlsfhk1 wrote: | Nothing AI created can have copyright under current law. | not2b wrote: | It's 70 in the US now. From the US Copyright Office: "As a | general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, | copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus | an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a | pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright | endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first | publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its | creation, whichever expires first. For works first | published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on | several factors." | Thorentis wrote: | Our current copyright is far far too long. 20 years would be far | more reasonable. We can talk about side issues all we want, but | at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the ability | to generate profit. 20 years is more than enough time to profit | from creative works. Are we as a society really saying that 75+ | years is how much time people ought to be profiting from creative | works? An absurd proposition in almost any other industry or | pursuit. | zozbot234 wrote: | OTOH, there's a huge amount of content out there that's | _formally_ and _legally_ in the public domain already but not | really findable /discoverable via detailed cataloging, or | easily usable (and reusable) by 21st-c. standards. Zillions of | random page scans up on Google Books, Hathitrust and the | Internet Archive. If what you genuinely care about is expanding | access to the legacy of our intellectual history, the low- | hanging fruit really is very low. | | Beyond clear cases like ensuring preservation of materials that | are obviously at risk, it's kinda hard to argue and lobby for a | shorter copyright term when we're collectively ignoring what's | long been available for the taking. | vhiremath4 wrote: | All of this IP law was written well before the large-scale | adoption of the internet which has greatly accelerated the | proliferation of ideas and and largely commoditized ingenuity. | It's insane we haven't lowered the current timeline. Some | commenters are mentioning the current folks in power who stand | to lose a lot pushing back on change. That's probably the most | plausible reason I can think of but curious of any others. | that_guy_iain wrote: | Imagine creating something in your 20s and you stop earning off | it in your 40s. I think it should be until the death of the | creator. | silisili wrote: | As was posited in another comment, if we're encouraging | innovation here, that would help the point. Encourage | creators to have to create again. | | As an aside - I'd imagine for most works, the vast majority | of earnings would come from the first 20 years. I mean, | people aren't flocking to the theatre to see Titanic anymore, | yeah? I'm sure there's some streaming deals and licenses to | show and whatnot, but nothing like theatre earnings. | ww520 wrote: | Yes. The copyright duration needs to be shorten. | | To grandfather in the existing copyrights, any new ones will | have one year shortened every year until the 20 year mark | reached. Then all copyright work have 20 years. That's it. | andirk wrote: | Seeing as the USA's ultra affluent crust is grossly crowded | with generational wealth, I don't think they'd like the idea of | removing any of their profits, however long ago and however | void of any of their own toil, regardless of the overall good | it would do. | autoexec wrote: | > at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the | ability to generate profit | | That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point. The | point was to promote the creation of new creative works. That's | it. The way to do that was making sure that creators had a | limited time where they could exclusively profit from their | efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was never | what copyright was all about. | | Today, creating/protecting profit is what it's been abused to | accomplish though, often hurting the creation of new works, and | most often not even for the benefit of the actual creators. | | 20 years was more than enough time for people to profit from | their works when worldwide distribution was basically | impossible, advertising was a joke compared to what we have | today, and it was a massive investment to publish at all. Now | you can publish for close to nothing and advertise and | distribute worldwide in seconds. 20 years is at least 2x too | long. 10 years seems far more reasonable to me. | | If we're reworking the system we also need to make sure that | DRM doesn't prevent works from being useful after they've been | returned to the public domain. That's a consideration they | didn't have to worry about when copyright protections were | being drafted, but it's increasingly going to lock us out of | our own culture. | judge2020 wrote: | Is it possible that the extremely long copyright time still | succeeds in promoting the creation of new works? For example, | under copyright, you can't take Mickey Mouse, throw | sunglasses on him, then re-release all of the existing work, | because it's not protected by the fair use clause. However, | if you were to create something demonstrably different to the | point where it does qualify for fair use, then suddenly | you've created new media that you have the copyright for and | can do whatever you wish (including sell it; whether or not | it's used for commercial purposes is only a factor in fair | use determinations, it doesn't instantly disqualify it for | fair use). | | The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the | ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it in | a way that makes it take on a new meaning. | autoexec wrote: | > The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the | ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it | in a way that makes it take on a new meaning. | | No... fair use doesn't work like you think it does and it's | a only a defense that has to be tested in court where | you'll be up against the legal team of a billion dollar | media industry that has connections and ties at the highest | levels of the justice system | | Once something is in the public domain you can use it to | create new works that are completely transformative without | risking losing everything in a lawsuit. | | Vast amounts of new and truly innovative creative works are | prevented from being created because of our existing | copyright laws. Music is the worst at this where just a | couple of notes being too similar to some other song can | cause you lose everything. People have lost fortunes just | for writing a new and unique song that just happened to be | in the same _genre_ as another song. | (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you- | copy-a...) | | Look at what one artist had to do (and pay) to get her film | seen by the public at all: | https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sita-sings-the-copyright- | bl... | | If those songs had been fully in the public domain, her | amazing and transformative film (which I'd recommend to | anyone) would have had no issues at all. How many artists | aren't willing or able to go through what she did and just | give up? How many musicians are writing songs that will | never see the light of day because of fear that some song | they've never heard before will be used to take everything | from them? They can sign over all their rights to the RIAA | and hope that's enough to protect them, or they risk being | sued. | | The public domain is critical for artists to be free to | create entirely new works and build on old ones to create | new works as well. | btdmaster wrote: | If fair use meant the same thing as new work, then yes | certainly. | | For now: https://mimiandeunice.com/2011/07/29/fair-use/ | zqfuz wrote: | "making sure that creators had a limited time where they | could exclusively profit" sounds like "protection of profit" | to me. | qu4z-2 wrote: | Right, but it's the means not the end. | autoexec wrote: | That was a means to an end, not the end itself. That's the | point. The goal of copyright has always been very clear. It | was for encouraging the creation of new works. | godelski wrote: | Done through the means of ensuring that the original | artist may profit off of their own hard work and no one | else can steal the hard work and profit off it. The abuse | you're talking about is the extension of the same | mechanism that allows rights owners to profit for much | longer periods of time, which actually discourages the | creation of new works. This can all be true because there | aren't binary solutions and things need nuance. | ep103 wrote: | Its the Mickey Mouse problem. Disney doesn't want Mickey or | related works to enter public domain, because it would be a | huge knock to their current empire. | | Still, this seems rather easily solvable to naive little old | me. | | 20 year copyright by default, with a 20 year review cycle | process an individual/company can apply to to ask for | extension, on the condition that they can prove harm to newly | generated IP, if the copyright is not-renewed. Still using | Mickey Mouse to generate new works of non-derivative IP, and | copyright of Mickey Mouse isn't causing damage to any other | competing agencies (the way holding IP to a new drug or | invention would)? Fine, renew granted. | clcaev wrote: | Or, beyond 28 years, if the work is not released to the | public domain, have an annual copyright tax based upon a | "fair market" assessment of the property. To keep assessment | real, perhaps let there be an auction starting at 2x the | taxed value. | elliekelly wrote: | Why should Disney get an infinite copyright? I think | copyright should be limited to natural persons. No one | involved in the creation of Mickey Mouse is still alive. | Imagine if the Brothers Grimm, Inc. had just kept infinitely | renewing their copyright claim? Disney wouldn't even exist. | Disney is a company that was _built_ upon works in the public | domain and now is depriving the rest of the world from the | very thing that allowed Disney to flourish in the first | place. | satvikpendem wrote: | Then what happens as humans solve aging and no one dies? | There should be an age limit regardless of natural or | corporate persons. | dudul wrote: | I feel like we can revisit when we reach this point :) | 1970-01-01 wrote: | >Franz Kafka, Amerika | | Looking forward to someone taking AI/ChatGPT and finishing the | unfinished book. | cauthon wrote: | Question about how public domain works in the US, specifically | with regards to this comment in the original post: | | > Here are just a few of the works that will be in the US public | domain in 2023. 2 They were supposed to go into the public domain | in 2003, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this | could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended | their copyright term to 95 years. | | Is the "20 year pause button" permanent, i.e. copyright term for | all works moving forward will be 95 years? Or will that | eventually expire and the term will revert to 75 years? | not2b wrote: | Permanent. The term is 95 years now, unless Congress changes | the law. And reducing it would be very difficult legally, with | copyright holders suing for their theoretical losses if | Congress "deprives" them of 20 years of protection that they | now consider their property. | 1980phipsi wrote: | I don't know if those suits would succeed. If Congress gives | someone a benefit and then gets rid of it, then you can't sue | the government to force them to keep giving it to you. | mdaniel wrote: | > Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym), The Tower Treasure (the first | Hardy Boys book) | | I loved those books growing up | lb1lf wrote: | As did I, my father had talked my grandfather into buying them | as they were released in Norwegian in the fifties, so I had | some fifty books on my shelves and read them all, some several | times. | | I adored them, but in hindsight: Gawds, how formulaic they | were. I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably | churn out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days. | | Excellent childhood memories, though - along with Anthony | Buckeridge's Jennings books, I spent more time with Hardy Boys | books during rainy summers than I care admit. | twiddling wrote: | "I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably churn | out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days." | | AI written pulp | georgeburdell wrote: | Steamboat Willie, which was an early (first?) appearance of | Mickey Mouse, is 1928 so this next year could be interesting for | copyright law | fjfaase wrote: | Please note that this list is for the U.S.A.. If you live in | another part of the world, these books might still be | copyrighted. For example, in the Netherlands (like most of the | EU), it is +70 years, meaning we still have to wait 5 more years. | | See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_public_domain | mod50ack wrote: | Note that for a number of EU countries, US works are in the | public domain once they are PD-US due to the application of the | rule of the shorter term. | londons_explore wrote: | And in other countries, it's really unlikely you'll end up in | prison or sued for using something that is both 75 years old | and already public domain elsewhere in the world. | fjfaase wrote: | There are a number of books that are based on Winnie-the- | Pooh and quoting fragments. For a long time, I have had the | idea to write a kind of annotated version of the stories | with references to all the books that reference the text. | | I understand Disney has the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh | character and that they still might cause trouble for those | who publish text from the books in Europe. | yamtaddle wrote: | > Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public | domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's | Battle of the Century entering the commons. Also notable: Wings, | winner of the first-ever best picture Academy Award; The Lodger, | Hitchcock's first thriller; and FW "Nosferatu" Mirnau's Sunrise. | | _Metropolis_ is so influential that I 'd call it a must-watch | for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind. | Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its | influence is everywhere. | | _Sunrise_ is one hell of a roller-coaster of a movie. As with | anything in the silent era (especially the non-comedy films) it | 's a bit of an _acquired taste_ but it 's among the earliest | films that I didn't just find interesting or funny, but that | really got me on the edge of my seat, several times. It's got | some real "yell at the screen" moments :-) I enjoyed it way more | than the director's more-iconic _Nosferatu_. Though, for my | money, it 's no _M_ or _The Passion of Joan of Arc_ , as silent | film dramas go. Still, really good, and I think a lot of critics | hold it in far higher regard than I do. | | Haven't seen the rest. | | > On the literary front, we have Virginia Woolf's To The | Lighthouse, AA Milne's Now We Are Six, Hemingway's Men Without | Women, Faulkner's Mosquitoes, Christie's The Big Four, Wharton's | Twilight Sleep, Hesse's Steppenwolf (in German), Kafka's Amerika | (in German), and Proust's Le Temps retrouve (in French). | | Damn, what a powerhouse year in literature. And look at that, my | favorite novel ( _To the Lighthouse_ ) is about to be public | domain! | | The Holmes news is awesome, too. Bunch of copyright troll dicks | have been making doing anything with Holmes risky for years. | Great that everyone can more-easily ignore them. | slater- wrote: | yes, it's true, I keep hearing the people everywhere clamoring | for their shot at remaking "The Jazz Singer." | | (something something blackface) | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | It was re-made in 1980 with Neil Diamond in the lead role: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film) | whycome wrote: | Metropolis + AI could result in some cool outputs. | runarberg wrote: | It actually could be kind of interesting to have AI fill in | the missing segments. I believe there are only 2 remaining, | and we roughly know what is supposed to be there, but not | able to restore it because of how few original copies remain. | So you should be able to do a supervised learning to | interpolate the remaining scenes and be fairly confident that | it matches the version that was premiered in 1927. | grujicd wrote: | I disliked Metropolis quite a lot. Maybe it was influential and | was probably a gamechanger at a time. But is it good in any way | from today's point of view? I'm not talking about effects or | scenography which could not technically be better at that era. | I'm talking about acting and script which look abysmal to me. I | would probably not have this kind of opinion but it's often on | some kind of top list and my expectations were high. Maybe I'm | missing something? Or is it just touted for historical | significance? | | It's not that I have a problem with old movies. Casablanca came | out only 15 years after Metropolis and is perfect in every way | I care about. | wazoox wrote: | Acting in silent movies is entirely different from what came | later. That's why most silent stars didn't make it into the | "talkie" era. | | Just like aliens in 60s movies speak English and are | obviously people in disguise, you just have to adhere to the | conventions of the time. | | Similarly, the ways to make the script go forward are usually | quite different from what came later, because of the constant | interruption required by text inserts. | | Last, the musical score is important. A bad one can make of | break a silent film (versions from archive.org and similar | sites often have random music instead of a true score). | | So you may need to learn the way of the silent movies before | really appreciating them (out of slapstick comedy such as | Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton). | yamtaddle wrote: | Silent-era sensibilities are very different from even WWII- | era talkies. The field developed whole bunch, very fast. A | lot of those films are difficult to appreciate without active | effort to acclimatize oneself to them, much the same way lots | of people bounce off classical music or jazz (or hip-hop, or | heavy metal, or most musical genres, really) until they've | had a bit more exposure and learned _how_ to enjoy them. | Plus, a lot of them were leaning _really hard_ into one | movement or another, and Metropolis is one of those (many) | cases, so what it 's _aiming_ to do well isn 't necessarily | the same set of things most modern films would aim to do well | (and indeed, off the beaten path you can find plenty of | modern films that similarly target some particular effect or | art movement, which can also take a bit of adjustment to | one's expectations to enjoy) | | Acting in particular has gone through some serious changes as | fashions come and go, and most any style one encounters aside | from what's now in-vogue tends to come off as corny. Even | Casablanca, which is ahead of its time in many ways (for an | American movie, anyway--the US lagged in some film technique | developments at the time, compared with other markets) | features acting that's less-naturalistic than what's popular | now. Also, changes in editing have really made a difference | in how performances come across, which is _part_ of why | watching a scene being filmed from a behind-the-scenes camera | can make the acting seem off or bad--because it 's not being | filtered through modern shot-framing and editing. | | IMO the comedies suffer the least and remain fairly | accessible (no matter when you were born, if you can't laugh | at Chaplin and Keaton, there's something wrong with you) but, | for most people, approaching the rest of the silent era is | more a _project_ than something you can just dip into here | and there and expect to have a good time. The field was | immature, the whole "silent" part of it takes some getting | used to, and there was a whole lot of art-movement-influenced | experimentation going on. | | There is, however, a lot of variety in styles in the silent | film era, especially in foreign film. If you don't like 20s | German expressionist films, try films of the 30s (IMO the | silent era got a _lot_ better toward the end), try American | films, try French, try Spanish, Russian, stuff like that. | Weird absurdist Spanish films that evoke the atmosphere of | Monty Python, shocking short films, heart-rending dramas, | cheap action schlock, about-the-town documentary or semi- | fictional films, heavy-handed allegory--lots of stuff to | explore. Plus the comedies, of which many are excellent and | most are fairly accessible to a modern audience. | nix0n wrote: | The thing that you're missing is the reappearance in other | places of Metropolis's visual style. It's probably easier to | see if you're a fan of Art Deco. It might also be easier to | see if you watch Tron, which also was influential via visual | style (in a different direction and lesser degree than | Metropolis). | kristopolous wrote: | Will the relevant YouTube videos that are "blocked in my country | on copyright grounds" get unblocked on that day? | | Anyone from YouTube know if this is the case? | dark-star wrote: | ...that is, unless Disney can force another extension to | Copyright law in the next couple days. I wouldn't be surprised if | they did (or tried, at least) | Gigachad wrote: | Tbh it would have been better if we just allowed corporations | to continue paying to extend their own copyrights forever and | everything that's no longer commercially viable or doesn't have | an entity owning it just gets freed quickly. | efsavage wrote: | Yes, they should be able to pay a fee to extend beyond a fair | time (~50 years?) based on a declared value of the work. To | ensure the declared value is realistic, they then must sell | the work to anyone that offers more than the declared value. | cmeacham98 wrote: | Can you explain how this is better? Also, how would we write | a law to determine if something is "commercially viable"? | kmeisthax wrote: | The idea is specifically to solve the orphan works problem. | | Practically speaking, life+70 is not that far off from | perpetual copyright _anyway_. Nobody cares if a book | published today will be escheated to the public domain in | 2093, and very few works from 1927 are valuable enough to | retain copyright today. In fact, it 's so valueless that | the vast majority of works still under copyright do not | have public documentation of title. The only way to find | out who owns these works is to get sued for pirating them. | | So the idea is to create some kind of small formality that | people have to jump through in order to retain ownership | over a work, because _vastly more_ works will hit the | public domain even if it means Mickey Mouse will always and | forever live in a cramped pet store cage shaped like a | circle-C. | | How to define "commercially viable" is... complicated. You | can either make copyright fully pay-to-play to soak Disney, | or you can err on the side of cheap renewals. I've also | heard talk of sliding-scales based on taxable value of the | property under copyright. I don't think it really matters | as long as we have a reasonable process to strip orphan | works of their copyright protection. | bombcar wrote: | Mickey Mouse should be under copyright and Mickey Mouse | should be taxed to an inch of his nasty rodent life are | two separate questions and should be handled as such. A | small fee should be fine (much less than the total cost | of a patent, say) perhaps with a requirement to keep the | work publicly available (print on demand and digital | makes this relatively easy). | dmitryminkovsky wrote: | > The only way to find out who owns these works is to get | sued for pirating them. | | Basically "old time radio" too. | Gigachad wrote: | The copyright owner determines that. Put some price on | renewal and let the owner decide if they want to pay it or | not. For the vast majority of content, it's worthless after | x years and they will just let it lapse. | | We could then shorten copyright down to something like 20 | years and anything still being sold or used can be renewed | while completely obsolete gameboy games become freed. | | Even if the fee was something like $10/year, probably the | majority of copyrights would not be renewed. | MarioMan wrote: | If the copyright makes more money than it costs to | maintain, then it is financially viable. I often see this | approach proposed alongside a renewal fee that rises each | time it is renewed, so that works will eventually become | too expensive to maintain copyright on and thus aren't held | in perpetuity. | LordDragonfang wrote: | The law isn't making that determination, the entities | paying to indefinitely extend its copyright are (presumably | at exponentially increasing rates). If it isn't viable, | they don't pay and the copyright lapses. | richardwhiuk wrote: | As in as a company you have to pay to extend copyright on a | certain work. | regulation_d wrote: | I strongly disagree. And not just because copyright in | perpetuity is unconstitutional. The value in a rich public | domain is vastly under-appreciated. The default position is | that IP is not protectable by law, because the free exchange | of ideas is extremely important to modern society. | | Certainly we have carved out exceptions to that default | position, but only for very clear and distinct policy | reasons. 1. consumer protection (trademark) and 2. | incentivizing innovation and expression (patent and | copyright). | | The idea that my great-great-grandchildren might want to | benefit from my having written a book really does not factor | into whether I might write a book. If I'm not incentivized by | life of the author + 70 years, I would probably not otherwise | be incentivized. | | Also, corporations don't pay to extend their copyrights. | Other than the money Disney pays their lobbyists. | standardUser wrote: | I'm doubting a Republican Congress will go out of its way to | support Disney. The fake "culture wars" may yield some | unintended benefits. | jcranmer wrote: | Steamboat Willie doesn't go public domain until 2024, so | there's technically another year. | | Disney is unlikely to attempt to push through another copyright | term extension (see https://arstechnica.com/tech- | policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... for fuller details). The two | main reasons are that there is a much more forceful caucus in | politics against copyright extension than there was 25 years | ago, and the arguments for doing so are weaker (the copyright | extension 25 years ago was partially driven by raising | copyright term in the US from "life + 50" to "life + 70", in | line with European standards). | | If one pays careful attention however, one would note that | Disney has, over the past few years, started using a clip from | Steamboat Willie more aggressively in its films, which has led | many to wonder if they're planning on taking down anyone who | distributes Steamboat Willie on the basis of trademark | violations instead. | kneebonian wrote: | I've noticed them putting steam boat willie in all of the | credits, at the same time things were going into the public | domain, I had always assumed that was the game plan. | | Make steamboat willie trademark not copyright, and the laws | become a lot more flexible around that. | yieldcrv wrote: | They have said they wont because people notice and care now. | | Thats an interest way of interacting in society. I want that | power. | Sunspark wrote: | No extension in the next couple days, but there will be another | 20+ year extension purchased within the next 11 years. Why? To | make sure 1938 doesn't go PD. | | I will leave it up to the reader as an exercise to determine | what is special about 1938. | daemoens wrote: | What's special about 1938? | leviathant wrote: | I'm going to guess the reference here is Superman | andirk wrote: | When Itchy & Scratchy teamed up for the war effort [0]? | Documents on Prescott Bush, grandfather of Bush Jr, who | happily sold steel to the Nazis and created the current Bush | family pile [1]? | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vhL6QsPGac | | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondw | orl... | ebiester wrote: | Is the start of the golden age of comic books enough? I'm | honestly not convinced. | jedberg wrote: | They stopped doing that a while ago. They realized it didn't | matter and was more beneficial for them so they can scoop up | more public domain and make more movies out of it. | phist_mcgee wrote: | Kids don't care about Mickey they care about Rocket Raccoon. | jonny_eh wrote: | It's incredible the amount of damage they've done in the | meantime. If only they can rollback the changes they, and | their lackeys, pushed through. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | > They realized it didn't matter and was more beneficial for | them so they can scoop up more public domain and make more | movies out of it. | | I don't have anything concrete to back this up, but it seems | more likely to me that they just don't see much potential | revenue in content from the 1920's, so they see little to be | gained from further spending on copyright-extension lobbying. | | Put another way, they've already succeeded. Copyright terms | aren't actually unending, but in profit terms (or practical | terms more broadly) the difference is minimal. | dang wrote: | Related (but we moved most comments hither): | | _2023 's public domain is a banger_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34071163 | jedberg wrote: | So in theory every streaming service could put all these movies | on their service, right? | | And I could sell a box set of "top movies of 1927"? | cmeacham98 wrote: | In the US, yes (not willing to make a claim about IP laws in | every country). | | Although I'm not sure how big the market will be as it will | also be completely legal to share and download them on internet | for free. | pavlov wrote: | Yes. But they are black-and-white and silent, which severely | limits the audience these days. | | Some of these movies have circulated with more recent | soundtracks, and those are off limits. In particular there's a | somewhat infamous 1984 version of "Metropolis" with music | produced by Giorgio Moroder and Freddie Mercury. That won't be | in the public domain until 2079... | not2b wrote: | A streaming service could hire musicians to do a new score | for public domain silent movies, they would then have the | exclusive right to distribute the combined work. | LeoPanthera wrote: | Yes, yes. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-20 23:00 UTC)