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: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 01 2019, @07:48AM (3 children)
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]
What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2019? [duke.edu]
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]
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 01 2019, @08:21AM (2 children)
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.
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
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
Get a whiff of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URAA [wikipedia.org]