Happy Public Domain Day
publicdomainreview.org
publicdomainreview.org
2024's public domain is a banger - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833881 - Jan 2024 (27 comments)
Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830264 - Jan 2024 (162 comments)
January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38823973 - Dec 2023 (15 comments)
Copyright for original Mickey Mouse persona to run out 1 January 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799484 - Dec 2023 (10 comments)
Mickey Mouse to Enter Public Domain: "It's Finally Happening'" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38737164 - Dec 2023 (7 comments)
Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678021 - Dec 2023 (208 comments)
Public Domain Day 2024 Is Coming: Here's What to Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586978 - Dec 2023 (6 comments)
The Mickey Mouse Copyright Runs Out in 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559037 - July 2023 (64 comments)
I was amused. And then as I watched, it started to feel kind of beautiful. We’re now free to do what we want with Steamboat Willie, yes. But in another sense, it's free too now. No longer a product, this little cartoon that changed the world is now just a part of our history and our culture, the water we swim in, as it has been and as it should’ve been for so long.
The legal question of whether putting something on an internet server constitutes publication in all countries simultaneously or just in the country where the server exists is still unsettled. So for example a UK citizen may wish to put Tolkien's works on the internet now that they are in the public domain there, but Tolkien's estate might decide to sue from the United States, or from many countries in Europe. Individuals and small entities are likely unwilling to bear the legal risk.
So the effective public domain date, from the viewpoint of the internet, is set by the countries with the longest protection terms, which appear to be Spain (80 years) and the US (95 years for works made for hire).
Anyway, there's stuff we're working on in any case... some infrastructure improvements.
I'm geeking out over Atterberg's 6th symphony right now, the score of which got uploaded a few hours ago. May even re-engrave it since there is a score but no parts, and it's instrumental demands don't put it out of reach of an enterprising community orchestra.
But country-level IP geolocation is trivial.
Court decisions in the US on jurisdiction of cross-border internet postings have been contradictory, and I know of none in non-US countries. Each country gets to rule on jurisdictional matters on its own terms.
J. R. R. Tolkien United Kingdom 3 January 1892 2 September 1973 Writer The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
It is not fulfilling its purpose for a long time now and is holding back humanity as a whole.
You just need to actually pay for the material.
Copyright is a real, not hypothetical, obstacle to preservation [2]:
> Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits. (See studies like the Hargreaves Review commissioned by the UK ns of the availability of copyrighted works and public domain works, and economic studies of the effects of copyright.)
I'm not arguing about whether copyright "holds back humanity". I'm just pointing out that "you just need to pay for the material" is a fundamental misunderstanding in the context of preserving copyrighted works. And personally, I think the US Congress should add a bright-line exception to copyright for preservation/archival without distribution by anyone.
The congress has added a process for the rule-making authority to draw bright-line distinctions for actual archivists to archive things, and they have done so. It’s just that it only applies to people who are actually archiving, not people who want to violate the terms of a license because they think they’re entitled to for some nebulous hand-wavy reason.
The rest is just being mad that people who own a thing, in this instance copyright to a work, are allowed to do whatever they want with their thing. Rights holders are not people who are temporarily holding something which belongs to mankind, quite the opposite. It’s their thing, they can do whatever they please with it. If you don’t like it you can kick rocks.
When people own their hard drives, they are allowed to do whatever they want with it, including ripping it and backing it up. It's their thing, they can do whatever they please with it. If copyright monopolists don't like it they can kick rocks; not like they can find out anyway.
In other words, keep your hands off my hard drive. My copy that I bought is not "your thing".
There are two separate issues:
1. Archiving so that the file will be accessible in the future to anyone once the copyright term expires is one issue, the only issue I wrote about in my previous comment, and the very subject of the ancestor comment by 1letterunixname: "It prevents archival, reproduction, and examination of interesting legacy works before they and their contemporary supporting materials disappear.".
2. Copying/recording a file so that it can be accessed using different devices or at different times for personal use. (This involves non-robust "archival" at minimum as a necessary constituent action but is better described as time shifting or place shifting depending on the situation.) By claiming that "Archiving doesn’t mean what you think it means", you're bringing up a second issue to ignore and dismiss the first issue.
In this comment as well, I am only discussing archival and preservation of the first kind.
> The congress has added a process for the rule-making authority to draw bright-line distinctions for actual archivists to archive things, and they have done so.
The closest thing I can find to an existing law allowing archival is "17 U.S. Code § 108 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives" [1]. To which I say, 1. it's outdated for this age of fast information transfer and 2. it's too narrow in regards to who can perform the actions of archival and in which cases [2]:
> In order to take advantage of the exception, libraries and archives must follow certain ground rules. They must be either open to the public or allow access to non-affiliated researchers; the copying cannot be for “direct or indirect commercial advantage”
...
> Using Section 108, libraries and archives can start preserving old digital files in their collections. It does not help them, however, preserve materials that they do not own, such as networked resources or Web sites. Nor does Section 108 help individuals who want to preserve a digital files they may have legally acquired or obtained from the Internet. For this sort of preservation, we must rely on fair use.
...
> Since individuals cannot use Section 108 to make copies, even for preservation purposes, they must turn to the Fair Use provision in US copyright law.
Under current federal law, the only parties who are definitely allowed to perform archival actions are organizations which provide archival to render specific services to some subset of people outside of the organization. Other organizations are out of luck, including groups which archive things and lock them - rather than curate/display them - until the respective copyright terms expire. All individuals are out of luck as well. There's fair use, but fair use can't provide the bright line I was arguing for in my previous comment. Setting aside the fact that copyright terms can reach decades longer than all modern human lifespans, what if I want to preserve things but will never share my backups with anyone else (except for an escrow party otherwise upholding the same rules in case the copyright terms outlive me) until the copyright terms expire? I should have a First Amendment right to do that.
The freedoms of speech, expression, and the press are not merely freedoms to convey information to others. They are also freedoms to receive information [3], so it follows that I should be able to store legally obtained information until I can convey it to other i.e. let others receive it once the copyright terms expire. These freedoms are subject to reasonable exceptions such as copyright and privacy, but the First Amendment overrides the previous parts of the Constitution - including the Copyright Clause - in cases of conflict. Copyright and archival often do conflict in reality [4]:
> The verdict is in: adding an extra 20 years to the US copyright term was a “big mistake.” This is not a quote from someone who is equivocal about copyright; it is a quote from the former head of our Copyright Office. Another former Director of the Copyright Office proposed shortening the copyright term by 20 years unless copyright owners “assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner.” Copyright holders such as Disney could readily secure “the full benefit of the additional twenty years,” while all of the works no longer being exploited would enter the public domain, fulfilling copyright’s goal of benefiting the public.
> Indeed, there is a consensus among policymakers, economists, and academics that lengthy copyright extensions impose costs that far outweigh their benefits. Why? The benefits are minuscule—economists (including five Nobel laureates) have shown that term extension does not spur additional creativity. At the same time, it causes enormous harm, locking away millions of older works that are no longer generating any revenue for the copyright holders. Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits. (See studies like the Hargreaves Review commissioned by the UK government, empirical comparisons of the availability of copyrighted works and public domain works, and economic studies of the effects of copyright.)
The US First Amendment's freedom of the press is not limited to press organizations and employees of press organizations. In the US, literally anyone can exercise freedom of the press under the First Amendment. US governments don't get to pick who is or isn't a journalist. Performing actions of journalism is a right. For example, using a phone to record an interaction between a police officer - a public servant - and a civilian is a First Amendment right due to freedom of the press. The same should apply to archival. Archival organizations and libraries should not be the only parties allowed to perform archival actions. In other words, the First Amendment should be interpreted to include a right to archival. Moreover, Section 108's restrictions on which things can be copied and how many copies can be made [1] conflict with data redundancy [5].
And just so we're clear, the public is entitled to unrestricted access to things in the public domain. In the US, the main purpose of copyright is to ensure that the public domain gradually gets filled with new works, including copyright works whose terms have expired. As I wrote in a different comment about the Copyright Clause [6]:
> In the US, copyright is a statutory right granted by the copyright laws written by Congress. Congress' authority to make copyright statutes and patent statutes is dependent on promoting the progress of knowledge and inventions
> The Copyright Clause allows Congress to produce short-term restrictions as the means to fulfill a long-term purpose. Congress can add and remove from copyright, but both actions must be for the purpose of promoting the spread, development, and eventual unrestricted public access to creative works. Emphasis on both "eventual" and "unrestricted". In simpler terms, copyright is a means to ensure that the public eventually gets access to every creative work.
I also wrote a different comment on the meanings of the terms "Science" and "useful Arts" in the Copyright Clause [7].
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
[2] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/11/10/digital_preservation...
[3] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/right-to-receive-inf...
[4] https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2024/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_redundancy
Hundreds of thousands of lives are being wasted working on the legal systems in place to protect a few huge companies profits.
And that is just from the top of my head.
Either you believe that it is more valuable for humans to compete with each other for technological advances to sell them as a product in the free market. These people would probably argue that the ability to sell your idea in a market with some amount of anti-competitor protection is what spurs people to make these advancements at all.
Or you believe that it is more valuable for humans to collaborate and build off of each other's ideas, which copyrights and similar legal protection concepts stifle. These people probably believe that their argument prevails over the previous camp's argument, or they may even believe that people would ultimately advance technology without copyright protections anyway.
Looking at it in one of those two ways, it seems pretty clear how one could draw the conclusion that copyrighting holds back humanity.
Ofc authors and publishers benefit from this friction, that is why copyright exists at all. But it is a legitimate question where precisely that tradeoff should lie.
Already in the 18th century in England, the Law Lords rejected "eternal" copyright as undesirable. 95 years isn't exactly eternity, but it is a lot longer than the original 14+14 format.
not about to jump right back into it with "42 years" That's still half a lifetime. Seems unnecessarily long.
Long enough to be painful enough to spend money, short enough that you can build upon the previous decade's work. If you have a childhood show, once you become a young adult, you can build on it legally. Simple to calculate too!