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Works from 1925 are now open to all! The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School's blog covers the famous works which rise to the public domain on January 1st, 2021.
On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 will enter the US public domain,1 where they will be free for all to use and build upon. These works include books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial (in the original German), silent films featuring Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, and music ranging from the jazz standard Sweet Georgia Brown to songs by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, W.C. Handy, and Fats Waller.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessley into the past."
F. Scott Fitsgerald, The Great GatsbyThis is not just the famous last line from The Great Gatsby. It also encapsulates what the public domain is all about. A culture is a continuing conversation between present and past. On Public Domain Day, we all have a “green light,” in keeping with the Gatsby theme, to use one more year of that rich cultural past, without permission or fee.
1925 was a good year for music. Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton were some of those active then. Though some consider it the best year so far for great books and many classics were published then, among them is the original German version of the all too relevant The Trial by Franz Kafka.
Previously:
(2020) Internet Archive Files Answer and Affirmative Defenses to Publisher Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
(2020) Internet Archive Ends “Emergency Library” Early to Appease Publishers
(2020) Project Gutenberg Public Domain Library Blocked in Italy for Copyright Infringement
(2020) ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ Turns 120
(2020) University Libraries Offer Online "Lending" of Scanned In-Copyright Books
(2019) The House Votes in Favor of Disastrous Copyright Bill
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Saturday January 02 2021, @02:45PM (11 children)
I registered the copyright to HRG, a program that software-hacked the Radio Shack MC-10 to actually display graphics, back in 1983. That copyright is still valid despite the fact that the computer it was written for hasn't been produced since 1985. That copyright is now entirely worthless.
I have a shelf full of 16 bit video games that are less than 30 years old. Pray tell me where I might find a computer that still works that will run Screamer and Road Rash?
This is the United States, although I realize you may be British or Canadian, but here, our constitution states that congress can protect works "for limited times" to produce those works in the first place. A corporate work like Steamboat Willie loses copyright after 95 years while my copyrights last for 95 years after I die. How in the flamingly stupid hell can Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison be convinced to create more works?
Every copyright law after 1909 should be repealed.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday January 02 2021, @02:53PM (8 children)
And what I am saying is you should be free to write your own program to duplicate that functionality, but you should not be free to take that program, call it something else, and sell it. I'm not sure where the confusion is. I'm not defending current copyright law - I am suggesting what it should look like.
Let's apply what I'm suggesting to your example. I'm suggesting you should have been able to record your own version of Purple Haze, and sell it, the day it's released, without paying JH anything. At the same time, you cannot take a recording he made, burn a CD of it, and sell it, probably till after his kids die.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 02 2021, @03:22PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 02 2021, @03:24PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @10:01PM
Copy, sell, and this is the big one: create and sell derivative works. That was the intent behind copyright being limited term, to encourage creation of new works. The current system smothers that by preventing old works from entering the public domain while they are still culturally relevant.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday January 03 2021, @03:30AM (1 child)
Sounds like you're confusing copyright protection with plagiarism protection. Quite understandable -- publishers have done much to foster all kinds of confusion on these matters.
We don't have explicit protections against plagiarism, that I know of. IANAL but I suppose plagiarism is a form of fraud and misrepresentation, and can be prosecuted as such. Still, as unethical acts go, it's a little weird how it is handled. The injured party has to sue. Or, it has to be handled by the organization, usually a school, who may fail or even expel a student for plagiarism. Otherwise, nobody much cares, nor will do anything about it. The police sure won't do anything about an act of plagiarism. Nor should they! Bad enough that they are sometimes used to arrest people for digital piracy.
As to selling copies of someone else's design yourself, it could be argued that comes under the heading of counterfeiting. Depends on the details. No one is going to be fooled into mistaking a cover of a song for the original, nor is anyone trying to do that. Paintings have been successfully counterfeited, so well that it took a great deal of examination to tell that the fakes were fake, but not performances of songs.
Would be good to have clarity on all these nuances. Good terminology is very helpful. Instead, the interested industries have made a policy of trying to confuse the public and conflate things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @09:30AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 04 2021, @10:06PM (2 children)
My point seemed to whizz right over your head, did you duck? twenty year old code is worthless. Thirty two bit programs run poorly on my newest computer, and my twenty year old games won't run at all. And again, all you can copyright is the code, which will be worthless on any other chip family. Your copyright is only as useful as your code, which is useless when the hardware is obsolete.
And the elephant: why should my works retain copyright a decade short of a century after I'm dead? You really think that copyright will induce me to write another novel after I die?
Why should the Bono Act not be repealed?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday January 04 2021, @10:29PM (1 child)
you know what you should do instead of worrying about putting things in bold? look into the code running at banks and air traffic control. in fact, there's code literally written for a mainframe 50 years ago that runs on a mainframe today, in production.
you seem like a guy who hasn't had a real job at a real company. 20+ year code is... most of the code out there running the world where you're a user.
>why should my works retain copyright a decade short of a century after I'm dead
I don't know, why don't you tell me, since you're the only one here who said that.
what's funny is when people who aren't in the industry say dumb things, and put those things in bold.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 14 2021, @08:01PM
You still haven't explained why copyright should last longer than patents. That 20 year old code running on a 20 year old mainframe is no longer available, yet is still under copyright. Where I worked, they used SAS, a mainframe program for statistics. You can only rent it, at $750 per user per year, and like all software is frequently updated. You want to reward thieves!
Copyright was allowed in order to induce creators to create further works. You're going to talk John Lennon into making another album?
Since the Bono Act was passed in the late '90s, Copyright lasts 95 years past the author's death, you can look it up. If it's a work for hire, the duration is 95 years. Works copyrighted 1925 are just now entering the public domain. The original US copyright was 14 years, and the Constitution says "for limited times" and SCOTUS said "limited" means whatever congress says it means. That was just wrong.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday January 04 2021, @01:01AM (1 child)
EA's Road Rash was originally made for the Sega Genesis console (called Mega Drive outside North America). My cousin just got a Genesis for Christmas, December 25, 2020.
In theory, the estates of those musicians can be convinced to finish and publish those musicians' unpublished works.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 04 2021, @10:14PM
In theory, the estates of those musicians can be convinced to finish and publish those musicians' unpublished works.
I'm not getting paid for any of the electrical towers my late dad, a lineman, built. Why should Sony Bono's grandkids get checks for his shit? As someone pointed out previously, copyrights were originally fourteen years TO INDUCE THEM TO CREATE MORE WORKS. Not to induce their grandchildren to do anything, let the damned grandkids do their own thing if they're talented.
Sorry to raise my voice but people aren't listening.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org