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Comment by Noos | Hacker News Reader

Problem is material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless. We already have many things, like the Fleischer Superman cartoons, for example. You just end up with cheap people bundling hundreds of public domain stuff with no real curation or quality for a few bucks in either physical or digital media form. Eventually, they stop bothering once they realize no one buys them; and it just gets thrown on youtube for fraction of pennies per ad click.

Doesn't even help creatives, because public domain stuff sees little to no creative half-life apart from the very best of the best. It's great for public in the same way f2p mobile games are great, as an endless mill of free content they can consume and forget, but once the brief flurry of monetization passes, the works become dead because there's no rights owner willing to spend the money to market or preserve the IP.

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>Problem is, material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless

I wonder if Disney, which built its empire on repurposing public domain Hans Christian Anderson stories as animated films, would have agreed with your assessment.

The value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale, nor is it supposed to be: the value is in being a direct, continuing, and explicitly legal source of inspiration for the new.

Haven’t seen Shakespeare go out of business.

Indeed the Arden Shakespeare show you how to make money (as does Disney): it’s the value add. Translation, curation, commentary, re-interpretation, analysis.

Contrast with books written in the seventies that have neither huge followings nor electronic versions: they might as well not exist.

The value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale

Reclam would like to have a word with you. For the non-Germans here, they are a German publisher known for their iconic yellow editions of literary classics. They got their big break in 1867 when Faust entered the public domain; their Faust edition was a cash cow, and they continued on with other authors. Later on they branched out with their own stable of authors.

I'm not saying that the intangible benefits don't exist, but even from free material you can make money.

We have Dover books doing much the same here in the US.

Disney could tell you about all the competitors whose works have all languished in the public domain and have been forgotten where they survived. I don't see people making new Tom Swift movies, falling in love with The Shadow, or a massive Woody Woodpecker revival, for example.

People focus on the biggest of the big as if that solves anything.

The earliest Woody Woodpecker clips won't enter the public domain util 2035.

The Shadow debuted in 1930, so it is also not yet in the public domain, but was also in a movie as recently as 1994, and it still appearing in licensed comics in 2015 and ongoing.

Some Tom Swift books have entered the public domain, but not all, and the character is still covered under trademark law also.

You're making a great point about how copyright is too long, leaving characters to languish, but none of your examples are actually in the public domain.

There's actually a new Woody Woodpecker movie releasing on DVD next month. It was #1 at the box office in Brazil back in October. The movie sounds like it had a troubled development, and they've scaled back their plans for it, but clearly Universal Studios is still trying to work with that character.

Why is "Fleischer Superman cartoons are available on YouTube for (functionally) pennies per ad click" a problem?

Worthless? Classical music, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, fairy tales, mythology, wizard of Oz. Shoot even the happy birthday song (which may or not be in pd, depending on who you all)

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