Public Domain Day 2014 225
An anonymous reader writes "What could have been entering the public domain in the US on January 1, 2014? Under the law that existed until 1978.... Works from 1957. The books On The Road, Atlas Shrugged, Empire of the Atom, and The Cat in the Hat, the films The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and 12 Angry Men, the article "Theory of Superconductivity," the songs "All Shook Up" and "Great Balls of Fire," and more.... What is entering the public domain this January 1? Not a single published work."
It's for the best (Score:3, Funny)
See, if those works had entered the public domain, the private owners would never profit off of them.
And that's very important you know. Look how much money that Atlas Shrugged movie made for Ayn Rand!
Re:It's for the best (Score:4, Funny)
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+5 funny
YOu are so right! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I weren't sooo lazy, I'd work a bit harder and BOOM! I'd be RICH! Why, if I weren't so lazy, I could get another job on top of my other two, and work some more! After all, I'm only working 80 hours a week and who needs sleep and recreation!
And we all know that the billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Buffet and all them got where they are by working hard and being honest and forthright people! Anyone can do it!
We all know that all it takes here in the states is to work hard and wealth is guaranteed! Well, if it weren't for the government regulations.
I had a chemical disposal business and the fucking EEE, PEEE, AYE stopped me from disposing in the local trout stream! How the hell is one going to make a living with these communist basterds?! And this bullshit nonsense about children getting cancer and whatnot - why there's St. Judes to help them! Business and profits first and health and well being is just a socialist value! Anyway, cancer was created by socialists to punish the hard working creators and rewards the takers!
And this bullshit of "you didn't build that!" why, the private sector could do just fine building roads and highways and edukating us!
If you're poor, it's all because of your character! Yes sir! If you worked hard have decent values, you wouldn't be poor!
Poor people have poor character and they are stupid! It's all their fault! If they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps like I did, all would be well!
I tell you, the values in this society have deteriorated. Way back when, those people would be left to starve - as they should - and it allowed for us makers to achieve and better society.
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But is private education really private ? how much subvention from the local gouvernement does your local private school got? Andis it always better ? Or is it perceived to be better ? And more importantly will it really be better for your kid ? It's not so black and white.
Education is mired with bad statistic, poor decision makind and the myth of the one fit all. It's the same all over the world.
Publicly educated. Right?
ESL (Score:2)
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Ayn Rand is dead, so why the need for continued copyright on the book?
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Reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated.
(The original Twain quote probably is still under copyright, but that was "fair use", wasn't it?)
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If Ayn Rand is still copyrighted, Rand Paul needs to change his first name.
But wasn't there a band in the 80's named D'rand D'rand . . . ?
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Nah, Rand Paul is (unintentional) parody and therefore Fair Use. ; )
Re:It's for the best (Score:4, Insightful)
I will bite. A fixed term for copyright is best.
Copyright gives value to a work, value dictates price, and price allocates scarce resources. If copyright expired with the death of the author, works made by people who die tragically young are worth less than those who just keep on going. Works written by older people – who have less life – are worth less than younger people.
There are older folks that I want to hear more of. There are older folks living off a one hit wonder from 50 years ago. This seems to me arbitrary and capricious. The value of a work should not be swayed by how much life is left in the author.
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(There's one scene where you can spot a set of 4x4 tracks off in the distance in that ST movie. One of the guys in the old BBS scene used "Why does God need a 4x4?" for his tagline for a while as a result. Ahh the good old days...)
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See, if those works had entered the public domain, the private owners would never profit off of them.
I think the AC is going for "funny" but nobody OWNS a writing or a song or image. I don't own Nobots, I merely have a "limited" (for bizarre values of "limited") time monopoly.
I control its publication, but I don't own it. Nobody does and nobody should.
What do ownership and property mean to you? (Score:2)
Would it matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, U.S. courts recently decided that public-domain works could have their copyrights reinstated post facto.
If anything from Disney did ever accidentally enter the public domain, Congress would fix that in short order.
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I don't think that this is correct. I definitely couldn't find anything out there about it happening in the US. EU it seems this is the case though.
And every so often there's something that slips through the cracks. It's not often, but it happens sometimes (the one I always remember is "Charade" (1963) which entered the public domain because Universal messed up their copyright notice for the film).
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Yup. Golan v. Holder [wikipedia.org].
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IIRC, I think 1 or 2 books or cartons slipped made it through the cracks back in the 70s. Disney and the publishers had a discussion where Disney mentioned that they still owned the trademark on Mickey. Cash was exchanged, the old books pulped, and new books were issued without Disney or Mickey on the covers.
Sherlock Holmes (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Sherlock Holmes is finally in the public domain. It took a court order to shake it loose, though.
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-new-sherlock-holmes-copyright-20131230,0,5610784.story [latimes.com]
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the latest 10 SH stories aren't in the public domain, only the earlier ones are
it keeps us safe (Score:5, Funny)
At least we are safe from a bunch of pseudo-libertarian amateur filmmakers creating their own personal "Atlas Shrugged" movies.
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Re:it keeps us safe (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, we must leave this to the professional film makers who absolutely did not release two nearly unwatchable Atlas Shrugged movies already...
They are simply being true to their source material. An unreadable book should translate to an unwatchable movie.
Re:it keeps us safe (Score:5, Interesting)
I have found that those most critical of Ayn Rand, and Atlas Shrugged in particular, have typically never read it. While it's a mildly interesting dystopian future novel, I've never fully understood either the praise or criticism it receives. For example you call it "unreadable", but I found it quite readable. It needed a better editor to trim out the fat, but you could say that about any James Michener novel as well. Her characters are one dimensional, especially the antagonists of the novel. That is probably my biggest gripe. Meanwhile some people seem to treat it like the Bible or similar. I read it once, and that was enough for me. I don't take my political ideology from novelists. I certainly don't pick and choose my reading material based on the ravings of left wing and right wing lunatics. So I can't understand how it is so influential, unless those who criticize it fear what it represents, and those who praise it can't think for themselves.
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I have read the book and watched both movies. I believe that Ayn Rand was wrong and right. Pure 100 percent capitalism is not a wonder drug. But regulations are wielded by the politically connected to the detriment of innovation on a fairly constant basis. When you do to much for the lazy at the expense of the drivers
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She was a Russian writer. Characters are meant to illustrate IDEAS, not be "real people".
Ogres have layers (Score:2)
Characters are meant to illustrate IDEAS
English plurals have ambiguities: did you mean "each character illustrates one idea" or "each character illustrates ideas"? Either way, ideas are like onions in that they have layers. So if you have an ogre character with ideas, your ogre likewise needs to have layers.
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I have found that those most critical of Ayn Rand, and Atlas Shrugged in particular, have typically never read it...
Really? How did you determine that? Or are you just assuming?
It is probably accurate to say the those most critical of Ayn Rand, and Atlas Shrugged in particular, have typically never finished it. I fall into that category. I got 10% of the way through, is that not enough punishment? It is one of the longest novels ever published by a regular publisher in English (perhaps the fifth longest) with 645,000 words (and fewer than 100 characters), about 80,000 more than War and Peace (which I had no trouble finis
Atlas Shrugged, War and Peace, and LOTR (Score:2)
Atlas Shrugged [has] 645,000 words (and fewer than 100 characters), about 80,000 more than War and Peace
And both have more words than The Lord of the Rings (481k), which is so long it initially had to be split into three volumes.
News Alert! Sonny Bono is dead! (Score:2)
He's buried here.. [tripadvisor.com]
You can go and hire Ms. Cleo [youtube.com] and do a seance and complain to him since he sponsored the legislation. [wikipedia.org]
Re:News Alert! Sonny Bono is dead! (Score:4, Funny)
He's buried here.. [tripadvisor.com]
You can go and hire Ms. Cleo [youtube.com] and do a seance and complain to him since he sponsored the legislation. [wikipedia.org]
See, even the trees opposed copyright extension.
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Come on, do you really want stuff like this? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Hurry!" Dagny Taggart moaned. "Before he gets any smaller!"
The strange cat in the hat grabbed the incredible shrinking man, who struggled mightily, but, being the size of a Barbie doll, could put up little resistance. "I'm gay, don't do this to me!"
"Tough shit, little man! I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.” He took him and and slowly eased him feet first up ins
GOD DAMN IT, this stuff is not public domain. Nevermind.
So who's got a torrent? (Score:5, Interesting)
It may still be illegal to download these things, but it's now much more difficult to argue that it's unethical to do so. Distributing these works should be considered an act of civil disobedience.
Re:So who's got a torrent? (Score:5, Interesting)
At least for Christians, it may be unethical to ignore bad copyright rules. In the Christian New Testament, St. Peter's first letter contains this passage:
"Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor."
A noteworthy thing here is that the letter carves out no exception regarding stupidly justified laws. (There are plenty of other places in the Bible that make it clear that it's okay for followers of God to disobey evil laws, however.)
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Nobody gives a damn what god has to say on the topic of copyright.
The creation myths in the bible were cribbed from the Babylonians, and the rest is just the collected works of a bunch of old men who wanted to control the masses.
You're essentially citing fairy tales as a basis for modern law.
Get over it.
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You need to slow down and reread my post. Nothing in it is significantly contingent on whether or not the Bible is true.
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This can not be allowed. Every mention of the bible in a "Non explicitly evil and/or stupid" context must be squashed.
You can see all the little PC Nazis running toward you ready to attack.
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I'll take a PC Nazi over a Mac Nazi any day.
Re:So who's got a torrent? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, I believe I did. Unless it's fair use. And I'm not a Christian ;)
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Only if he is the UK and he quoted from the King James version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_bible#Copyright_status [wikipedia.org]
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No. The Constitution clearly states the reason for patent and copyright (to get people to produce more works for the public domain) and states "for limited times". a lifetime plus 95 years is in no way limited, and there's no way to convince Jimi Hendrix to make any more music.
The Constitution is the law of the land and the Bono Act breaks that law (yes, I know of the bullshit Lessig verdict). Therefore, NOT practicing civil disobedience is immoral (religion deals with morality, not ethics). Yes, it makes n
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Too bad I don't have any moderator points, I'd have given you an informative. I haven't been on slashdot recently so maybe that's why I have no points, but I strongly suspect I had some metamoderators mod down some of my past moderations in a rather controversial article I decided to moderate. If only we had meta-meta-moderation, I think I'd still have had a point left to give you. Too bad.
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The Constitution clearly states the reason for patent and copyright (to get people to produce more works for the public domain) and states "for limited times". a lifetime plus 95 years is in no way limited, and there's no way to convince Jimi Hendrix to make any more music.
Indeed. The original copyright laws passed in the U.S. right after the Constitution was written allowed for a 14-year term of copyright, with an optional 14-year renewal. It wasn't until 1909 that it reached the 28+28 years formula used in TFA.
Following the original 1790 copyright statute, everything up to 1985 should now be in the public domain -- John Irving's Cider House Rules, James Michener's Texas, Carl Sagan's Contact, and movies like Back to the Future, The Color Purple, Out of Africa, and The G
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For Christians, the word of Jesus is important.
Peter, not so much. Unless you're Catholic, of course, then Peter deserves a lot more attention.
Alas, all too many modern Christians (and non-Christians) pay less attention to the words of Jesus and more to the later commentary than they should.
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Re: So who's got a torrent? (Score:2)
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and it is unethical to let a sucker keep his money.
If Atlas Shrugged went public domain (Score:3)
I think the universe would implode.
And none ever will again (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to Disney and others, the very idea of works EVER entering the public domain will eventually become a relic.
Re:And none ever will again (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know who the fuck modded this down (Disney fan maybe??), but I'm dead serious. Back in the day, I used to teach my students the in-and-outs of copyright law (75 years plus, or whatever the hell the law happened to be at any given time). But since the 90's, I just tell them that anything that anything published from 1923 onwards will always be under copyright.
Re:And none ever will again (Score:5, Informative)
And the real irony is that Disney built its animated empire on stories in the public domain:
- Snow White? Grimm's Fairy Tales.
- Pinocchio? Carlo Collodi, 1880.
- Fantasia? Classical music from the public domain. The highlight, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, is from Goethe in 1798.
- Bambi? Nope, they stole that one too, from a 1923 work of Felix Salten
- Cinderella? That was written about 1700.
- Alice in Wonderland? Lewis Carroll, of course.
Basically, if it's a "Disney princess", they almost definitely stole the character from somewhere else.
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And the real irony is that Disney built its animated empire on stories in the public domain:
- Snow White? Grimm's Fairy Tales.
- Pinocchio? Carlo Collodi, 1880.
- Fantasia? Classical music from the public domain. The highlight, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, is from Goethe in 1798.
- Bambi? Nope, they stole that one too, from a 1923 work of Felix Salten
- Cinderella? That was written about 1700.
- Alice in Wonderland? Lewis Carroll, of course.
Basically, if it's a "Disney princess", they almost definitely stole the character from somewhere else.
Disclaimer: I am a Disney fan. However, I am willing to admit that Disney has hypocritically played both sides of the aisle here in milking public domain when it suited them (Snow White now practically belongs to them, for example) and crying loudly for copyright protection for their original material about to enter the public domain, but your examples are not 100% accurate.
Fantasia contains "Rite Of Spring" which was composed by Igor Stravinski and should have been under copyright at the time (the fi
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So should public domain status be "viral" like the GPL ? The actual performance of the work (speaking the words as well as the animation) and the recording thereof is what is copyrighted, not the actual story. Should derivative works automatically become public domain (and only public domain, no "cross licensing")?
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Don't forget The Jungle Book, which they published about one day (I'm only slightly exaggerating) after it entered the public domain to avoid paying the estate of Kipling (or whoever owned the rights.)
The Disney version. (Score:4, Interesting)
And the real irony is that Disney built its animated empire on stories in the public domain
- Bambi? Nope, they stole that one too, from a 1923 work of Felix Salten
It is never wise to take anything a geek says about Disney at face value.
In 1933, Sidney Franklin, a producer and director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purchased the film rights to Felix Salten's novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods, intending to adapt it as a live-action film. After years of experimentation, he eventually decided that it would be too difficult to make such a film and he sold the film rights to Walt Disney in April 1937. Disney began work on crafting an animated adaptation immediately, intending it to be the company's second feature-length animated film and their first to be based on a specific, recent work.
Bambi [wikipedia.org]
Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version [amazon.com] retells fifty of these classic tales in a four hundred page book. Call it eight pages on average per story.
That is barely enough material to sustain a one-act stage play.
The truth is that the adaptation becomes memorable through its embellishments, its richness in detail. ''Hansel & Gretel'' at Columbia Marionette Theatre: A Sweet Artistic Triumph [jaspercolumbia.net]
It isn't a generic Sleeping Beauty the geek wants to appropriate from Disney, it is Maleficent. [youtube.com]
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Which is funny since Disney made their fortune remaking stories that were already in the Public Domain: ...
Cinderella
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Beauty and the Beast
Frozen
The list goes on.
They Should Lose Public Protection (Score:5, Interesting)
The entire purpose of copyright was to serve as an incentive for creators to add to the public wealth of knowledge and art. It was mutually beneficial: they get public protection for their work, and the public receives high quality art.
The corruption of copyright by the likes of Disney and other mega-conglomerates has polluted that purpose. Now, copyright is a legal bludgeon used to deprive the public of its culture while perpetually forcing them to pay to get it back.
If they want perpetual ownership of their work, they should lose any public or legal protections of it: it's quid pro quo, and if they are unwilling to hold up their end, they should be required to hold up both.
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The entire purpose of copyright was to serve as an incentive for creators to add to the public wealth of knowledge and art. It was mutually beneficial: they get public protection for their work, and the public receives high quality art.
The primary purpose of copyright was to ensure that the creators could profit from their work for a reasonable length of time, then the work would enter the public domain so others can use or extend it. I agree that current copyright laws don't serve that purpose very well; the concept needs to be modernized to accommodate corporations which can exist for hundreds of years as well as individuals. More like trademark than copyright.
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The primary purpose of copyright was to ensure that the creators could profit from their work for a reasonable length of time, then the work would enter the public domain so others can use or extend it.
No.
The primary purpose of copyright is to serve the public interest in advancing the progress of science. The means by which it functions involves giving authors a chance to profit (it's far from ensured; in fact most never make a cent from their copyrights and never will) but its a big mistake to confuse the means with the ends.
I agree that current copyright laws don't serve that purpose very well; the concept needs to be modernized to accommodate corporations which can exist for hundreds of years as well as individuals. More like trademark than copyright.
That would just make things worse. We need to seriously reduce the scope and duration of copyright. It's grown so bloated that authors would barely notice any effects of this, but t
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I'm thinking that 75 years (or whatever it's at now) is probably too high, but if the number was set too low, then we'd have a similar problem that we now have with piracy, where there's so much work freely available, that people don't bother paying for the new stuff.
You may wish to double-check your figures on the profits of the culture industry. It may be shocking, after the bullshit spewed by the RIAA, MPAA, etc., but they are making a hell of a lot of money despite piracy. There is also a substantial amount of research that suggests those who pirate more also legally purchase more when it comes to media.
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Without a way to flawlessly record and maintain books, music, and movies, works would inevitably be lost, or of poor quality, so people needed new works to be produced, or there would be no copyrighted works.
Umm, not really. I work on a regular basis with old books (with include music manuscripts too) that are hundreds of years old, some over a thousand. Parchment required killing lots of animals to make a manuscript; paper books were also quite expensive until the 1900s. Anything that was valued enough to be written down at all was meant to last. And by the time that movies became very popular, copyright terms were 56 years (28+28), whereas movie fads changed so rapidly that a lot of early films from the 1
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Without a way to flawlessly record and maintain books, music, and movies, works would inevitably be lost, or of poor quality, so people needed new works to be produced, or there would be no copyrighted works.
What the hell are you talking about?
We've always been able to flawlessly copy books. We haven't always done enough of it, but we've always been able to. And music and movies can generally be preserved and reproduced fairly well if some care is taken.
Copyright interferes with the preservation and reproduction of works by imposing additional costs on archivists and outright impeding copying and distribution.
We put up with it, to the extent that we do, because we hope that it will spur the creation and distrib
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And it was a battle between the elected House of Commons who wanted to have copyright as eternal (the book publishers at this time invented the fiction that it was for the authours) and the unelected House of Lords who didn't and eventually won out with the 14+14 year compromise for "The Advancement of Learning" as the original copyright act included in its title. This is a good example of the problems with (representative) democracy.
Undoing mod (Score:2)
The buggy Slashdot mod system made me mod "overrated" by accident.
This post will undo it.
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Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
If I take some food to eat, and the government takes the food back from me because I haven't paid for it, they are by definition depriving me of food. Of course, if the food was previously owned, I'll have deprived the previous owner in taking it.
Property ownership comes down to the threat of depriving people if they try to enjoy something which doesn't belong to them.
The question is the extent to which deprivation is moral.
None of this has anything to do with copyright: the great thing about copyin
Re:They Should Lose Public Protection (Score:5, Informative)
And this still works perfectly well today, thank you very much.
Perfectly well? Really? Do you realize how many works are completely lost, from film, to music, to software to any other creative field simply because they never entered the public domain and copyright holders either disappeared or held them tightly in their grasp? On top of that, you have corporations like Disney whose entire existence was built on the works of others now abusing that same privilege to deprive future generations of their own creativity.
I wouldn't call either of those things "perfectly well".
Defending property rights of the citizenry is among the top tasks of any government.
Intellectual property is only "property" because the government, our government, labeled it as such. It shares little in common with actual property: it's not tangible, it doesn't degrade and it's not limited in quantity or duplication. Were it not for the public invention of protecting it, it would have no inherent protections. So if we receive no public benefit, why should we spend public resources defending it for them?
Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
Of course you are. That's an obvious statement. But it's an entirely different situation because food is a tangible product limited in quality and quantity. It has inherent protections intellectual property does not so comparing the two is asinine.
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> And this still works perfectly well today, thank you very much.
Not really. Look at Disney's portfolio again. None of their early work would have been legal had they not had public domain stuff to copy. So they would have made NO new art. That is where many people are today. Unable to use parts of out very culture because someone owns it. Copyright is harming the vast majority of people's ability to create art in order to enrich a few, entrenched entities'.
> Defending property rights of the citizenry
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And this still works perfectly well today, thank you very much.
No, it doesn't. I covered this in an earlier comment, scroll up.
Defending property rights of the citizenry is among the top tasks of any government.
If you buy a copy of my novel, the book is your property. But the novel is nobody's property. There is no such thing as intellectual property. It is NOT property, damn it!
Re:They Should Lose Public Protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
(3) If the person who has an abundance of it is unwilling to provide* at any reasonable price, yes.
(4) If the food is purposely made** to spoil fast, sometimes even before you were able to take a bite from it.
(5) If you have to pay the producer of your piece of food over and over again*** in full, if you want it to last or if you want to eat it in another venue than you originally intended.
(* publishers that let works go 'out of print' but still prosecute 'alternative means of distribution'. It is called artificial scarcity and is something very common when dealing with monopolies.)
(** certain DRM mechanisms come to mind.)
(*** LP, Cassette, CD. Celluloid film, Video cassette, Laser disk, DVD, Blu-ray. Digital distribution with various restrictions. Multiple devices for playback, or the inability to be able to.)
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Now, what does any of this have to do with "orphan works"?
The best argument for change in PD laws (Score:4, Interesting)
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Extension of copyright is a "taking" from the public under the Constitution.
meh (Score:2)
What about orphaned works? (Score:2)
I'd like to see copyright law changed to make orphaned works available to the public. A simple way to do that would be to require a periodic registration (with fee) after an initial implicit registration period. For example, works that are over 20 years old would need to be registered every 5 years at a cost of $100 or they would revert to public domain. Then, services which make public domain works available online would be able to access the registry to determine whether an old work is in the public do
Parallel With Snowden (Score:2)
I see a parallel with the Snowden revelations of an out-of-control national security apparatus, which has created a vigorous and still growing push-back against flagrant abuse of the the government's powers (search warrants anyone?).
The corruption of the law and legal process by corporations to create a copyright regime that defies the U.S. Constitution* has created a widespread (and growing) view that copyright as it now stands is simply wrong - it is straight-out theft of public property for private gain.
Keep Ayn Rand's books protected (Score:2)
If those go public domain, every Ron Paulite will be posting them everywhere.
We will die in a flood of one-dimensional characters and cardboard-cutout dilemmas.
Please make sure they never get into the public domain.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
sibling is right... if it's so crappy, then why the need to rent-seek on them? Consider that the majority of the works' creators are dead by now (it's been 56 some-odd years), so it's not like they're directly benefiting from copyright. So who is benefiting? The kids, the corporations, and a whole lot of other people who did approximately bupkis to create these works.
Copyright is about a temporary monopoly on a creative work. It is emphatically not meant to be a perpetual money machine.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is, what can we do about it?
Long copyrights are great for corporations but shitty for authors. There was a fellow a couple years ago who was sued for writing a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye", that book should be in the public domain.
Insane copyright law is keeping The Paxil Diaries in electronic form and out of gutenberg.org because of twenty four words in the 80k word book. One chapter concerned the re-dedication of the Illinois State Library which was renamed to Illinois last late poet laureate's name. There was a 24 word poem displayed, which I copied with a pencil and used as the chapter's intro.
That poem, written in 1961 by a woman now long dead should NOT be covered by copyright. I may publish the book with the poem replaced by a rant about our insane copyright laws if I can't get permission to use it (I think the state holds copyright but I don't know).
Meanwhile, you can read Nobots [mcgrewbooks.com] for free online, I'm only charging for real books, which actually have a cost to print and distribute.
I've written my congressmen and Senators, have you written yours?
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The question is, what can we do about it?
Civil disobedience en masse, to the point where you cannot possibly enforce it. This is happening now with marijuana usage, and will likely end up happening with movies and music, if BitTorrent traffic is an indicator.
You could write the congresscritters (one of my senators --Sen. Wyden-- gets it, but the other 534 congresscritters in DC don't, and some (Hatch in Utah) actively try and make things worse. Too bad the rest either don't care or have been bought off enough to ignore it.)
I'm afraid there aren't
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Especially annoying when Hatch has repeatedly been caught infringing copyright on his web site and in many of his speeches.
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There was a fellow a couple years ago who was sued for writing a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye"
Yea, by fucking J.D. Salinger himself (or did mentioning that little tidbit weaken your argument too much to make it worthy of a mention?)
So sad that this is where you've invested your moral outrage, that one of the century's most noted author's sued because he didn't want some talentless ass hat publishing fan fiction (a.k.a. unoriginal self-indulgent feculence) to muddy his genuine, original and critically acclaimed novel.
Hammer on Disney and the other greedycorps all you want, but when a living author wa
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nothing wrong with the e.e. cummings style, we're communicating online rather than writing a formal letter.
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That (1) misses the point, which is that U.S. copyright law has become wholly uncoupled from the point of granting copyrights in the first place, and (2) isn't even true for a lot of works. Google "orphan works."
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Actually there are plenty of works being lost every day that no one has access to as a result of over extension of copyright. Relatively obscure works from prior to the 1920s are plentiful because they are in the public domain and are freely available. Works that are still covered by copyright are difficult to find even if you're willing to pay for them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/
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Or that's what the cartel which controls it's distribution now wants.
Copyright has long ceased to be about what the creator of a work wants, and is far too often about what the corporations who control them want.
Just because a corporation sits on something and doesn't publish, doesn't mean that the copyright owner has any say any longer -- because sometimes distribution rights also factor in.
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You can pay for public domain works as well.
Difference is that if the copyright holder doesn't think it's worth the bother of publishing something, then you can't buy it at all. If it were in the public domain, someone else might decide to publish it....
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Looks like we've got a counterexample case to Betteridge's Law of Headlines!