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Comment by redbeard0x0a | Hacker News Reader

Except public domain only happens 70 years after the authors death (or 95 years after publication when talking about corporate authors).

So I could write a good book now, publish it, let it go out of print as of this year, live another 40 years. You wouldn't be able to get a copy of my work from the public domain until the year 2127.

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Unless something major changes, public domain will never happen again. Corporations such as Disney will continuously lobby to extend it to cover their older works.

I'm ok with Disney keeping copyright on their works; I just wish that wasn't tied together with so many other works that have been abandoned by their authors (like old games, books, media, etc).

I'm really not. They lobby for special legislation around all their specific works. Mickey Mouse should really be in the public domain by now. They should respect those laws and move on to new trade-markable characters and learn to rebrand themselves. The fact that they are so big that they can be granted special exemption is pretty alarming.

It seems you’re conflating trademark and copyright. Personally, I’m fine with trademarks continuing in perpetuity as long as the owner maintains the registration. Disney gets to keep their brand name and trademarked characters. It’s copyright on Disney’s films and music that’s the problem. Maybe I can’t make my own Mickey film, but I could certainly remix Steamboat Willie cartoons if they entered the public domain. Or do similar with their music. But it’s really not even about that. If Disney gobbles up all the copyrightable content, maintains copyright forever, then creating something new (but too similar) can put an individual artist in trouble with copyright law. That’s unacceptable.

Except you should realize 99% of Disney's "works" were ripped off of public domain (and expired copyright) works, which they THEN (after making billions) lobbied to have copyright extended so nobody would ever be able to do what they did.

It has to be one of the sickest corporate abuses ("anti-consumer, anti-society") in US history.

> Except public domain only happens

Flip it: Public domain happens by default. The problem is that some very powerful lobbyists ensure that the government declares otherwise for ridiculously long (and constantly increasing) periods.

In 2023 Mickey mouse is due to enter the public domain again so it'll probably increase before then

Probably? More like "guaranteed."

The Constitution requires that copyright durations be of a "limited times". At some point, we're going to need to put our collective foot down on this or hope that SCOTUS does.

Long copyright terms wouldn't be a problem, if we started to treat copyright as property with respect to taxation. There should be some baseline tax, such that you have to invest money to keep it going. Probably after a couple of first years when the tax is zero, to allow authors to get the cash flow going. And then use the collected taxes to fund public non-copyrighted art.

I know how public domain works. My comment was making light of the OP's ambiguous analogy.

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