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posted by requerdanos on Saturday January 02 2021, @04:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the free-the-mouse dept.

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 Gatsby

This 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


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @09:09PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @09:09PM (#1094037)

    Copyright being automatic and not requiring registration is from the Bern convention, which the US joined in 1989. The 1790 law only protects registered works and requires complete publication. Samples are not sufficient.

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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 02 2021, @09:40PM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday January 02 2021, @09:40PM (#1094049) Journal
    So go invent a time machine. There was zero protection for computer programs in 1790 anyway. And going to the same limited term as 1790 doesn't imply you have to accept everything else from 1790. The original term limits of 14 years plus an extension of 14 years are sufficient to encourage creativity without locking up ideas until they have no meaning whatsoever.

    If you produced a printout of source code in 1790 you'd be accused of witchcraft and the source would be burned as "magik from that era's equivalent of Beetlejuice.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 03 2021, @12:36AM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday January 03 2021, @12:36AM (#1094116) Journal
    The Berne Convention states that copyright deists from the time the work is first put in fixed form. No requiring publication, and requiring registration is illegal.
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