From Motherboard
When the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, movies, songs, and books created in the United States in 1923—even beloved cartoons such as Felix the Cat—will be eligible for anyone to adapt, repurpose, or distribute as they please.
A 20-year freeze on copyright expirations has prevented a cache of 1923 works from entering the public domain, including Paramount Pictures' The Ten Commandments, Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim, and novels by Aldous Huxley.
Such a massive release of iconic works is unprecedented, experts say—especially in the digital age, as the last big dump predated Google.
In 2013, Paul Heald, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, conducted a survey of books for sale on Amazon. He found that more books were for sale from the 1880s than the 1980s.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Monday December 31 2018, @11:59PM (3 children)
The annoying part about additional extensions is they will get passed quietly on the back of some unrelated law such that even the few that are paying attention might not notice.
But then again, will it even matter if an extension is passed or not? If works based on these new public domain works continue to get DMCAed, would anybody even be able to do anything about it? I'm aware they already DMCA stuff that should be in the public domain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @03:14AM (2 children)
How is even possible? Or legal? Each and every single law should be passed on its own.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @04:01AM (1 child)
The people passing the laws determine what is legal. They made it legal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @08:04AM
The people passing the laws don't even read them.