SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
As the new year starts, Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain reminds us that works from 1926 ascend to public domain, and become available for use by any and all in any manner they may wish. There is also a lot of recorded music starting to enter the public domain, as an estimated 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 hit the scene. Most of them music recordings are salvaged from very fragile 78 RPM platters using multiple methods.
In 2022, the public domain will welcome a lot of “firsts”: the first Winnie-the-Pooh book from A. A. Milne, the first published novels from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, the first books of poems from Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker. What’s more, for the first time ever, thanks to a 2018 law called the Music Modernization Act, a special category of works—sound recordings—will finally begin to join other works in the public domain. On January 1 2022, the gates will open for all of the recordings that have been waiting in the wings. Decades of recordings made from the advent of sound recording technology through the end of 1922—estimated at some 400,000 works—will be open for legal reuse.
Why celebrate the public domain? When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. That is something Winnie-the-Pooh would appreciate. Community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books can make works fully available online. This helps enable access to cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history. 1926 was a long time ago. The vast majority of works from 1926 are out of circulation. When they enter the public domain in 2022, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.
The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. The whole point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But it also ensures that those rights last for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! As explained in a New York Times editorial:
- When a work enters the public domain it means the public can afford to use it freely, to give it new currency . . . [public domain works] are an essential part of every artist’s sustenance, of every person’s sustenance.
See also, What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2022? A festive countdown which, were it not blocked by javascript, would highlight a selection of what has become available.
Previously:
(2021) Public Domain Day in the USA: Works from 1925 are Open to All!
(2020) January 1, 2020 is Public Domain Day: Works From 1924 Are Open to All!
(2018) Public Domain Day is Coming
(2014) Happy Public Domain Day: Here are the Works that Copyright Extension Stole From You in 2015
and more ...
(Score: 4, Funny) by MIRV888 on Sunday January 02 2022, @09:10AM (12 children)
If the work of / music / art is still bringing the is Cheddar. This supersedes the greater good.
The Twain estate should still be collecting on his works.
Shakespeare's descendants? Ripped off by cultural elite and ivory tower cronies.
Disney finally had the balls to step up and pay congress to essentially give him permanent copyright on his hard work.
If you perform The Lion King with your 3rd grade students, what you need to do is pay for the permission to use Big D's creations. They belong to him even though he is dead.
Because Disney will sue your grade school out of existence.
Don't test the D. They don't play.
($3500 to perform The Lion King at a children's grade school play.)
I know this because Mom was teaching the kids. Slaughter Elementary, Louisville, KY
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Sunday January 02 2022, @10:08AM (1 child)
I'll write because you're missing the point of allowing copyright in the first place, or else the sarcasm has gone over my head. The constitution mentions it specifically in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the constitution [congress.gov], and notice the inclusion of the words promote and limited:
Its specific purpose for even existing at all is to advance culture and knowledge, not line particular corporate pockets for eternity. However, now that most people are raised by social media and not actual people, and even the older population has willingly submitted to years of revisionism by the same social media, few know their own laws regarding governance.
Now just think how Disney Corporation is going to be once DRM is infecting the WWW more widely.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @02:59PM
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday January 02 2022, @04:35PM (7 children)
Apparently Walt died in 1966, so if they keep getting the line pushed back every 10 years it's mostly been whoever is running the company since.
I just did a bit of searching around, and I'm starting to wonder where all this "Walt Disney was a Nazi" stuff comes from, as all I found was that he "gave Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl a tour of his studio a month after Kristallnacht"...which, I mean...Walt was in propaganda for the U.S., too?* Not a good luck but it hardly proves he was a Nazi.
*oh, no wait, that was a few years later. but they were still both involved in the high levels of the movie industry at the time
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @09:44PM (4 children)
"Nazi" is an anti-white and anti-NSDAP Jewish slur.
Poland, England, the USA and Russia are/were all Shabbos Goy slave states who never should have allowed themselves to be used against Germany. Hitler was just trying to free his people from the clutches of the evil, subversive International Jew.
https://odysee.com/@martyleeds33:6/069---We-Need-To-Talk-About-The-Jews:d [odysee.com]
Whites in those countries were duped (or forced in some cases) to murder righteous German soldiers and murder and rape completely innocent women and children. Shameful.
The US should have allied with Germany and killed the communist Jews in Russia and gave the White Russians their country back (or the part they could actually handle).
https://odysee.com/@stpierrs:f/Adolf-Hitler-The-Greatest-Story-Never-Told-(Full).mp4:3 [odysee.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @10:33PM (2 children)
Well, never thought I'd actually see someone on SN literally defend Nazis, yet here we are! If there is a God then you are impotent and we'll never see another iteration of whatever is wrong with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03 2022, @12:25AM
Not the previous AC, but I'll bite. Yeah, I could defend Nazi's to you if it was relevent. Here, watch:
"Hitler? Hitler did a lot of things wrong. I'll even go so far as to say he did most things wrong. But he didn't do everything wrong, there are things he did right. He was an evil man for initiating what we today call the holocaust, but that's no reason to pretend absolutely everything he ever did was evil and misguided."
Do you see how that works? Refusing to paint with a broad stroked brush, refusing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, call it what you will. The world isn't digital, it's analog. Totally right and totally wrong don't enter in to it.
I could defend the devil himself in a debate, if I had to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03 2022, @03:14AM
New here? Oh wait, you're the AC whose never heard of himself.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 03 2022, @01:21AM
Well, never thought I would see the day when somebody railing about the Jews is actually sort of on-topic. It's true that Hitler had a total rage-boner for the Jews.
But of course I'm still going to mod it Troll
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @11:58PM
He didn't pay homage to the Democrat Party, therefore he is Nazi.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 04 2022, @03:26PM
There were definitively anti-nazi films produced by Disney:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_for_Death [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03 2022, @04:39PM (1 child)
Derivative licensing fees for illegally copying Kimba the White Lion?
Or Lucas for stealing the plot of The Hidden Fortress'?
Or Star Trek DS9 for stealing the plot of Babylon 5, including the PahWraith/The Shadow guys? (And in an ironic crossover, Checkov played Bessel in B5!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03 2022, @05:09PM
Disney made its animated feature fortune on the back of public domain (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.).
How is it a crossover if Checkov wasn't a DS9 character?