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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 hendrikboom on Saturday January 02 2021, @07:38PM (3 children)
You would have the rights to do this only for the ten-year-old versions of the GPL source code, not the current versions, unless there have been no changes or bugfixes in the intervening ten years.
Now there may well be some software so stably reliable that it has neede no fixes in ten years. Know of any?
Well, maybe the Kruzeman Aretz Algol 60 compiler, but it's hard to come by the Electrologica machines it runs on these days.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 02 2021, @08:06PM (2 children)
Or you can make your own bug fixes. And it's not like open source software hasn't had bugs sitting in plain sight for 10 years. We know "open source makes all bugs shallow" was a myth.
Same as, after copyright is over, you're free to decompile and patch the binary that is no longer copyrighted. Though common sense says that it benefits everyone to be able to do this even during the term of copyright if the copyright holder doesn't want to fix it. Like software that "goes out of support." You don't want to support it with bug fixes, others should be allowed to.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday January 03 2021, @03:13AM (1 child)
I believe the original quote was "Many eyes make all bugs shallow." Only works if many eyes actually study the code.
I quite agree.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 03 2021, @03:55AM
But even the Berne Convention terms for duration of copyright are way to long, and insane.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.