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posted by takyon on Monday December 31 2018, @07:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the promote-the-useful-arts dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 01 2019, @07:48AM (3 children)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 01 2019, @07:48AM (#780571) Journal

    Duke University's Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has some notes on this years upgrades from 1923

    January 1, 2019 is (finally) Public Domain Day: Works from 1923 are open to all! [duke.edu]

    For the first time in over 20 years, on January 1, 2019, published works will enter the US public domain.1 Works from 1923 will be free for all to use and build upon, without permission or fee. They include dramatic films such as The Ten Commandments, and comedies featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. There are literary works by Robert Frost, Aldous Huxley, and Edith Wharton, the “Charleston” song, and more. And remember, this has not happened for over 20 years. Why? Works from 1923 were set to go into the public domain in 1999, after a 75-year copyright term. But in 1998 Congress hit a two-decade pause button and extended their copyright term for 20 years, giving works published between 1923 and 1977 an expanded term of 95 years.2

    What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2019? [duke.edu]

    Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author's death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1962 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2019. Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2058.1 Elsewhere on this site, we celebrate works from 1923 that will actually be entering the public domain in 2019, after a 95-year term. But 1923 was a long time ago—imagine if works from 1962 and earlier were “free as the air to common use”! Here’s what could have been.

    See also:
    The Verge : After a 20 year delay, works from 1923 will finally enter the public domain tomorrow [theverge.com]
    Outside the Beltway : After 20-Year Delay, Works from 1923 Lose Copyright Protection [outsidethebeltway.com]

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 01 2019, @08:21AM (2 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday January 01 2019, @08:21AM (#780577)

    The term of copyright for a work should be calculated based on the state of the law at the time the work was copyrighted. Anything else is retroactive law making.

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    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @11:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @11:40AM (#780597)

      That.. is very sane.
      Consider other crimes. If it didn't used to be a crime and the law was changed then it only matters after the law changed.
      If copyright at the time for these works was only a few years, how can they extend it now?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 02 2019, @04:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 02 2019, @04:21AM (#780887)

      Get a whiff of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URAA [wikipedia.org]