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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 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