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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: 2) by theluggage on Saturday January 02 2021, @03:01PM (3 children)
It's quite straightforward: if the copy resembles your 1990 source code, it doesn't violate copyright. If it includes code and changes you made in 2004, it violates. You can't copyright the core logic - then we'd be talking about software patents, which is a whole different blazing dumpster-full of canned worms. The US legal system knows exactly how to deal with open-and-shut cases like that: Just wave a briefcase full of examples of copied code, refuse to show it to the court, declare bankruptcy and let your creditors pay your lawyers until it has dragged on for over a decade and turns out that you didn't own the copyright in the first case...
Far easier to deal with than this sort of entirely subjective thing [wikipedia.org] with literature. (TL:DNR - Sherlock the emotionless smackhead is public domain but if he cracks a smile it is still copyrighted) although after looking up the link I see it's recently been thrown out (presumably after the lawyers compared the serial numbers on their banknotes).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @03:08PM (2 children)
There should be no copyright on software at all, only NDAs and trade secrets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @10:10PM
Such an idiotic policy would eliminate open source software, so kindly die in the same fire as the software patent proponents. Source code is speech and should receive the same protections (no more and no less) than any other kind of creative expression.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @03:02AM
Remember when software was authored and published?
It still is!